JMA

What is JMA?

JMA (the Jurik Moving Average) is an adaptive moving average developed by Mark Jurik of Jurik Research. It attacks the trade-off every smoother faces: reducing noise means adding lag. Instead of weighting bars with a fixed scheme the way an SMA or EMA does, JMA adjusts its smoothing bar by bar in response to recent price behavior, hugging price through fast directional moves and flattening through congestion. The result is a curve designed to stay unusually smooth for how little it lags.

Two things distinguish JMA in practice. First, the exact algorithm is proprietary: Jurik Research never published it, so the versions found on public charting platforms are reverse-engineered approximations that can differ slightly from one another. Second, common ports expose a phase input (typically from -100 to +100) alongside length: higher phase lets the average turn earlier at the cost of overshoot, lower phase suppresses overshoot at the cost of extra lag. That dial matters because no setting removes the trade-off; it only chooses where to sit on it.

How traders use it

• As a drop-in replacement for a standard moving average in crossover logic, aiming for similar smoothness at lower lag; whether that improves results depends on the market and must be tested, not assumed.
• As a trend baseline: price holding above a rising JMA (or below a falling one) sets directional bias, and the line's direction feeds slope filters and regime rules.
• As a smoothing core inside other tools: applying JMA smoothing to an oscillator such as RSI, or to a volume series, cuts noise before any signal logic runs.
• As dynamic support or resistance in trends, watching how pullbacks behave around the line; like any moving average, it marks a zone of interest, not a floor that must hold.

JMA vs similar moving averages