Triangular MA

What is a Triangular MA?

A triangular moving average is a simple moving average smoothed a second time: an SMA of an SMA, with each pass covering roughly half the stated period (platforms differ on how odd lengths are split, so two implementations can disagree slightly at the same setting). Running two near-equal windows back to back makes the combined weights form a triangle across the lookback, heaviest at the middle of the window and tapering toward zero at both ends.

That center-weighting is the opposite of front-loaded schemes like the WMA or EMA, which concentrate weight on the newest bars. The TMA is therefore one of the smoothest fixed-window averages and one of the least responsive: recent bars carry as little weight as the oldest ones, so the line turns well after price does. It is best treated as a slow trend backbone rather than a signal line.

How traders use it

• As a smooth directional filter: the TMA's slope carries most of its information, and because the line rarely wiggles, slope flips are infrequent enough to gate faster entry logic, a use closely related to the MA slope filter.
• As the midline for bands and channels: some envelope-style tools are centered on a TMA precisely because the midline stays calm, so changes in band width reflect volatility rather than midline noise.
• As an internal smoothing stage: some oscillator and momentum designs pass their raw series through triangular smoothing to suppress bar-to-bar noise before signal rules are applied.