How It Trades
- Compute two exponential moving averages of the close: a fast one over 20 bars and a slow one over 50.
- Buy when the fast EMA crosses above the slow one: recent closes are pulling the short average up through the longer trend.
- Sell when it crosses back below. Unlike a simple average, an EMA never drops an old close outright; it fades it, so the line turns sooner and moves more smoothly through a choppy stretch.
Example Strategy
Pine Script
Paste it into TradingView’s Pine Editor to run these rules on any chart.
//@version=6
// EMA 20 50 Crossover — sort.finance. Fills at the signal bar's close, 0.02% fee a side,
// whole account per trade, as the backtest. History and indicator warm-up
// differ from the site's, so expect close to the same trades, not identical.
strategy("EMA 20 50 Crossover", overlay=true,
initial_capital=100, default_qty_type=strategy.percent_of_equity,
default_qty_value=100, commission_type=strategy.commission.percent,
commission_value=0.02, process_orders_on_close=true, pyramiding=0)
// The bar the current position opened on, and the bar the last one closed on.
var int entryBar = na
var int exitBar = -1
// ── Signals ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
fast = ta.ema(close, 20)
slow = ta.ema(close, 50)
above = fast > slow
enterNow = above and not above[1]
exitNow = not above and above[1]
// ── Orders ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
// Open on the first bar the entry holds while flat; close on the first
// later bar the exit holds; never reopen on the bar a position closed.
inTrade = strategy.position_size != 0
if inTrade and bar_index > entryBar and exitNow
strategy.close("Long")
exitBar := bar_index
else if not inTrade and bar_index > exitBar and enterNow
strategy.entry("Long", strategy.long)
entryBar := bar_index
// ── Drawing ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
plot(fast, "EMA 20", color=#4d8dff)
plot(slow, "EMA 50", color=#e0a03a)