Posts Tagged ‘Simple’

McGinley Dynamic: The Reliable Unknown Indicator

Written by admin. Posted in Technical Analysis

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The McGinley Dynamic is a little-known yet highly reliable indicator invented by John R. McGinley, a chartered market technician and former editor of the Market Technicians Association’s Journal of Technical Analysis. Working within the context of moving averages throughout the 1990s, McGinley sought to invent a responsive indicator that would automatically adjust itself in relation to the speed of the market.

His eponymous Dynamic, first published in the Journal of Technical Analysis in 1997, is a 10-day simple and exponential moving average with a filter that smooths the data to avoid whipsaws.

Key Takeaways

  • John R. McGinley is a chartered market technician known for his work with technical market strategies and trading techniques.
  • The McGinley Dynamic is a moving average indicator he created in the 1990s that looks to automatically adjust itself to the pace of the financial markets.
  • The technique helps address the tendency to inappropriately apply moving averages.
  • It also helps to account for the gap that often exists between prices and moving average lines.

Simple Moving Average (SMA) vs. Exponential Moving Average (EMA)

A simple moving average (SMA) smooths out price action by calculating past closing prices and dividing by the number of periods. To calculate a 10-day simple moving average, add the closing prices of the last 10 days and divide by 10. The smoother the moving average, the slower it reacts to prices.

A 50-day moving average moves slower than a 10-day moving average. A 10- and 20-day moving average can at times experience the volatility of prices that can make it harder to interpret price action. False signals may occur during these periods, creating losses because prices may get too far ahead of the market.

An exponential moving average (EMA) responds to prices much more quickly than a simple moving average. This is because the EMA gives more weight to the latest data rather than older data. It’s a good indicator for the short term and a great method to catch short-term trends, which is why traders use both simple and exponential moving averages simultaneously for entry and exits. Nevertheless, it too can leave data behind.

The Problem With Moving Averages

In his research, McGinley found moving averages had many problems. In the first place, they were inappropriately applied. Moving averages in different periods operate with varying degrees in different markets. For example, how can one know when to use a 10-day, 20-day, or 50-day moving average in a fast or slow market? In order to solve the problem of choosing the right length of the moving average, the McGinley Dynamic was built to automatically adjust to the current speed of the market.

McGinley believes moving averages should only be used as a smoothing mechanism rather than a trading system or signal generator. It is a monitor of trends. Further, McGinley found moving averages failed to follow prices since large separations frequently exist between prices and moving average lines. He sought to eliminate these problems by inventing an indicator that would hug prices more closely, avoid price separation and whipsaws, and follow prices automatically in fast or slow markets.

McGinley Dynamic Formula

This he did with the invention of the McGinley Dynamic. The formula is:


MD i = M D i 1 + Close M D i 1 k × N × ( Close M D i 1 ) 4 where: MD i = Current McGinley Dynamic M D i 1 = Previous McGinley Dynamic Close = Closing price k = . 6  (Constant 60% of selected period N) N = Moving average period \begin{aligned} &\text{MD}_i = MD_{i-1} + \frac{ \text{Close} – MD_{i-1} }{ k \times N \times \left ( \frac{ \text{Close} }{ MD_{i-1} } \right )^4 } \\ &\textbf{where:}\\ &\text{MD}_i = \text{Current McGinley Dynamic} \\ &MD_{i-1} = \text{Previous McGinley Dynamic} \\ &\text{Close} = \text{Closing price} \\ &k = .6\ \text{(Constant 60\% of selected period N)} \\ &N = \text{Moving average period} \\ \end{aligned}
MDi=MDi1+k×N×(MDi1Close)4CloseMDi1where:MDi=Current McGinley DynamicMDi1=Previous McGinley DynamicClose=Closing pricek=.6 (Constant 60% of selected period N)N=Moving average period

The McGinley Dynamic looks like a moving average line, yet it is actually a smoothing mechanism for prices that turns out to track far better than any moving average. It minimizes price separation, price whipsaws, and hugs prices much more closely. And it does this automatically as a factor of its formula.

Because of the calculation, the Dynamic Line speeds up in down markets as it follows prices yet moves more slowly in up markets. One wants to be quick to sell in a down market, yet ride an up-market as long as possible. The constant N determines how closely the Dynamic tracks the index or stock. If one is emulating a 20-day moving average, for instance, use an N value half that of the moving average, or in this case 10.

It greatly avoids whipsaws because the Dynamic Line automatically follows and stays aligned to prices in any market—fast or slow—like a steering mechanism of a car that can adjust to the changing conditions of the road. Traders can rely on it to make decisions and time entrances and exits.

The Bottom Line

McGinley invented the Dynamic to act as a market tool rather than as a trading indicator. But whatever it’s used for, whether it is called a tool or indicator, the McGinley Dynamic is quite a fascinating instrument invented by a market technician that has followed and studied markets and indicators for nearly 40 years. In creating the Dynamic, McGinley sought to create a technical aid that would be more responsive to the raw data than simple or exponential moving averages.

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Add-On Interest Definition, Formula, Cost vs. Simple Interest

Written by admin. Posted in A, Financial Terms Dictionary

Add-On Interest Definition, Formula, Cost vs. Simple Interest

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What Is Add-On Interest?

Add-on interest is a method of calculating the interest to be paid on a loan by combining the total principal amount borrowed and the total interest due into a single figure, then multiplying that figure by the number of years to repayment. The total is then divided by the number of monthly payments to be made. The result is a loan that combines interest and principal into one amount due.

This method of calculating the payment on a loan is substantially more expensive for the borrower than the traditional simple interest calculation and is rarely used in consumer loans. Most loans use simple interest, where the interest charged is based on the amount of principal that is owed after each payment is made. Add-on interest loans may occasionally be used in short-term installment loans and in loans to subprime borrowers.

Key Takeaways

  • Most loans are simple interest loans, where the interest is based on the amount owed on the remaining principal after each monthly payment is made.
  • Add-on interest loans combine principal and interest into one amount owed, to be paid off in equal installments.
  • The result is a substantially higher cost to the borrower.
  • Add-on interest loans are typically used with short-term installment loans and for loans made to subprime borrowers.

Understanding Add-On Interest

In simple interest loans, where the interest charged is based on the amount of principal that is owed after each payment is made, the payments may be identical in size from month to month, but that is because the principal paid increases over time while the interest paid decreases.

If the consumer pays off a simple interest loan early, the savings can be substantial. The number of interest payments that would have been attached to future monthly payments has been effectively erased.

But in an add-on interest loan, the amount owed is calculated upfront as a total of the principal borrowed plus annual interest at the stated rate, multiplied by the number of years until the loan is fully repaid. That total owed is then divided by the number of months of payments due in order to arrive at a monthly payment figure.

This means that the interest owed each month remains constant throughout the life of the loan. The interest owed is much higher, and, even if the borrower pays off the loan early, the interest charged will be the same.

Example of Add-On Interest

Say a borrower obtains a $25,000 loan at an 8% add-on interest rate that is to be repaid over four years.

  • The amount of principal to be paid each month would be $520.83 ($25,000 / 48 months).
  • The amount of interest owed each month would be $166.67 ($25,000 x 0.08 / 12).
  • The borrower would be required to make payments of $687.50 each month ($520.83 + $166.67).
  • The total interest paid would be $8,000 ($25,000 x 0.08 x 4).

Using a simple interest loan payment calculator, the same borrower with the same 8% interest rate on a $25,000 loan over four years would have required monthly payments of $610.32. The total interest due would be $3,586.62.

The borrower would pay $4,413.38 more for the add-on interest loan compared to the simple interest loan, that is, if the borrower did not pay off the loan early, reducing the total interest even more.

When researching a consumer loan, especially if you have poor credit, read the fine print carefully to determine whether the lender is charging you add-on interest. If that is the case, continue searching until you find a loan that charges simple interest.

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Annual Percentage Rate (APR): What It Means and How It Works

Written by admin. Posted in A, Financial Terms Dictionary

Annual Percentage Rate (APR): What It Means and How It Works

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What Is Annual Percentage Rate (APR)?

Annual percentage rate (APR) refers to the yearly interest generated by a sum that’s charged to borrowers or paid to investors. APR is expressed as a percentage that represents the actual yearly cost of funds over the term of a loan or income earned on an investment. This includes any fees or additional costs associated with the transaction but does not take compounding into account. The APR provides consumers with a bottom-line number they can compare among lenders, credit cards, or investment products.

Key Takeaways

  • An annual percentage rate (APR) is the yearly rate charged for a loan or earned by an investment.
  • Financial institutions must disclose a financial instrument’s APR before any agreement is signed.
  • The APR provides a consistent basis for presenting annual interest rate information in order to protect consumers from misleading advertising.
  • An APR may not reflect the actual cost of borrowing because lenders have a fair amount of leeway in calculating it, excluding certain fees.
  • APR shouldn’t be confused with APY (annual percentage yield), a calculation that takes the compounding of interest into account.

APR vs. APY: What’s the Difference?

How the Annual Percentage Rate (APR) Works

An annual percentage rate is expressed as an interest rate. It calculates what percentage of the principal you’ll pay each year by taking things such as monthly payments and fees into account. APR is also the annual rate of interest paid on investments without accounting for the compounding of interest within that year.

The Truth in Lending Act (TILA) of 1968 mandates that lenders disclose the APR they charge to borrowers. Credit card companies are allowed to advertise interest rates on a monthly basis, but they must clearly report the APR to customers before they sign an agreement.

Credit card companies can increase your interest rate for new purchases, but not existing balances if they provide you with 45 days’ notice first.

How Is APR Calculated?

APR is calculated by multiplying the periodic interest rate by the number of periods in a year in which it was applied. It does not indicate how many times the rate is actually applied to the balance.


APR = ( ( Fees + Interest Principal n ) × 365 ) × 100 where: Interest = Total interest paid over life of the loan Principal = Loan amount n = Number of days in loan term \begin{aligned} &\text{APR} = \left ( \left ( \frac{ \frac{ \text{Fees} + \text{Interest} }{ \text {Principal} } }{ n } \right ) \times 365 \right ) \times 100 \\ &\textbf{where:} \\ &\text{Interest} = \text{Total interest paid over life of the loan} \\ &\text{Principal} = \text{Loan amount} \\ &n = \text{Number of days in loan term} \\ \end{aligned}
APR=((nPrincipalFees+Interest)×365)×100where:Interest=Total interest paid over life of the loanPrincipal=Loan amountn=Number of days in loan term

Types of APRs

Credit card APRs vary based on the type of charge. The credit card issuer may charge one APR for purchases, another for cash advances, and yet another for balance transfers from another card. Issuers also charge high-rate penalty APRs to customers for late payments or violating other terms of the cardholder agreement. There’s also the introductory APR—a low or 0% rate—with which many credit card companies try to entice new customers to sign up for a card.

Bank loans generally come with either fixed or variable APRs. A fixed APR loan has an interest rate that is guaranteed not to change during the life of the loan or credit facility. A variable APR loan has an interest rate that may change at any time.

The APR borrowers are charged also depends on their credit. The rates offered to those with excellent credit are significantly lower than those offered to those with bad credit.

Compound Interest or Simple Interest?

APR does not take into account the compounding of interest within a specific year: It is based only on simple interest.

APR vs. Annual Percentage Yield (APY)

Though an APR only accounts for simple interest, the annual percentage yield (APY) takes compound interest into account. As a result, a loan’s APY is higher than its APR. The higher the interest rate—and to a lesser extent, the smaller the compounding periods—the greater the difference between the APR and APY.

Imagine that a loan’s APR is 12%, and the loan compounds once a month. If an individual borrows $10,000, their interest for one month is 1% of the balance, or $100. That effectively increases the balance to $10,100. The following month, 1% interest is assessed on this amount, and the interest payment is $101, slightly higher than it was the previous month. If you carry that balance for the year, your effective interest rate becomes 12.68%. APY includes these small shifts in interest expenses due to compounding, while APR does not.

Here’s another way to look at it. Say you compare an investment that pays 5% per year with one that pays 5% monthly. For the first month, the APY equals 5%, the same as the APR. But for the second, the APY is 5.12%, reflecting the monthly compounding.

Given that an APR and a different APY can represent the same interest rate on a loan or financial product, lenders often emphasize the more flattering number, which is why the Truth in Savings Act of 1991 mandated both APR and APY disclosure in ads, contracts, and agreements. A bank will advertise a savings account’s APY in a large font and its corresponding APR in a smaller one, given that the former features a superficially larger number. The opposite happens when the bank acts as the lender and tries to convince its borrowers that it’s charging a low rate. A great resource for comparing both APR and APY rates on a mortgage is a mortgage calculator.

APR vs. APY Example

Let’s say that XYZ Corp. offers a credit card that levies interest of 0.06273% daily. Multiply that by 365, and that’s 22.9% per year, which is the advertised APR. Now, if you were to charge a different $1,000 item to your card every day and waited until the day after the due date (when the issuer started levying interest) to start making payments, you’d owe $1,000.6273 for each thing you bought.

To calculate the APY or effective annual interest rate—the more typical term for credit cards—add one (that represents the principal) and take that number to the power of the number of compounding periods in a year; subtract one from the result to get the percentage:


APY = ( 1 + Periodic Rate ) n 1 where: n = Number of compounding periods per year \begin{aligned} &\text{APY} = (1 + \text{Periodic Rate} ) ^ n – 1 \\ &\textbf{where:} \\ &n = \text{Number of compounding periods per year} \\ \end{aligned}
APY=(1+Periodic Rate)n1where:n=Number of compounding periods per year

In this case your APY or EAR would be 25.7%:


( ( 1 + . 0006273 ) 365 ) 1 = . 257 \begin{aligned} &( ( 1 + .0006273 ) ^ {365} ) – 1 = .257 \\ \end{aligned}
((1+.0006273)365)1=.257

If you only carry a balance on your credit card for one month’s period, you will be charged the equivalent yearly rate of 22.9%. However, if you carry that balance for the year, your effective interest rate becomes 25.7% as a result of compounding each day.

APR vs. Nominal Interest Rate vs. Daily Periodic Rate

An APR tends to be higher than a loan’s nominal interest rate. That’s because the nominal interest rate doesn’t account for any other expense accrued by the borrower. The nominal rate may be lower on your mortgage if you don’t account for closing costs, insurance, and origination fees. If you end up rolling these into your mortgage, your mortgage balance increases, as does your APR.

The daily periodic rate, on the other hand, is the interest charged on a loan’s balance on a daily basis—the APR divided by 365. Lenders and credit card providers are allowed to represent APR on a monthly basis, though, as long as the full 12-month APR is listed somewhere before the agreement is signed.

Disadvantages of Annual Percentage Rate (APR)

The APR isn’t always an accurate reflection of the total cost of borrowing. In fact, it may understate the actual cost of a loan. That’s because the calculations assume long-term repayment schedules. The costs and fees are spread too thin with APR calculations for loans that are repaid faster or have shorter repayment periods. For instance, the average annual impact of mortgage closing costs is much smaller when those costs are assumed to have been spread over 30 years instead of seven to 10 years.

Who Calculates APR?

Lenders have a fair amount of authority to determine how to calculate the APR, including or excluding different fees and charges.

APR also runs into some trouble with adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs). Estimates always assume a constant rate of interest, and even though APR takes rate caps into consideration, the final number is still based on fixed rates. Because the interest rate on an ARM will change when the fixed-rate period is over, APR estimates can severely understate the actual borrowing costs if mortgage rates rise in the future.

Mortgage APRs may or may not include other charges, such as appraisals, titles, credit reports, applications, life insurance, attorneys and notaries, and document preparation. There are other fees that are deliberately excluded, including late fees and other one-time fees.

All this may make it difficult to compare similar products because the fees included or excluded differ from institution to institution. In order to accurately compare multiple offers, a potential borrower must determine which of these fees are included and, to be thorough, calculate APR using the nominal interest rate and other cost information.

Why Is the Annual Percentage Rate (APR) Disclosed?

Consumer protection laws require companies to disclose the APRs associated with their product offerings in order to prevent companies from misleading customers. For instance, if they were not required to disclose the APR, a company might advertise a low monthly interest rate while implying to customers that it was an annual rate. This could mislead a customer into comparing a seemingly low monthly rate against a seemingly high annual one. By requiring all companies to disclose their APRs, customers are presented with an “apples to apples” comparison.

What Is a Good APR?

What counts as a “good” APR will depend on factors such as the competing rates offered in the market, the prime interest rate set by the central bank, and the borrower’s own credit score. When prime rates are low, companies in competitive industries will sometimes offer very low APRs on their credit products, such as the 0% on car loans or lease options. Although these low rates might seem attractive, customers should verify whether these rates last for the full length of the product’s term, or whether they are simply introductory rates that will revert to a higher APR after a certain period has passed. Moreover, low APRs may only be available to customers with especially high credit scores.

How Do You Calculate APR?

The formula for calculating APR is straightforward. It consists of multiplying the periodic interest rate by the number of periods in a year in which the rate is applied. The exact formula is as follows:

APR=((Fees+InterestPrincipaln)×365)×100where:Interest=Total interest paid over life of the loanPrincipal=Loan amountn=Number of days in loan term\begin{aligned} &\text{APR} = \left ( \left ( \frac{ \frac{ \text{Fees} + \text{Interest} }{ \text {Principal} } }{ n } \right ) \times 365 \right ) \times 100 \\ &\textbf{where:} \\ &\text{Interest} = \text{Total interest paid over life of the loan} \\ &\text{Principal} = \text{Loan amount} \\ &n = \text{Number of days in loan term} \\ \end{aligned}APR=((nPrincipalFees+Interest)×365)×100where:Interest=Total interest paid over life of the loanPrincipal=Loan amountn=Number of days in loan term

The Bottom Line

The APR is the basic theoretical cost or benefit of money loaned or borrowed. By calculating only the simple interest without periodic compounding, the APR gives borrowers and lenders a snapshot of how much interest they are earning or paying within a certain period of time. If someone is borrowing money, such as by using a credit card or applying for a mortgage, the APR can be misleading because it only presents the base number of what they are paying without taking time into the equation. Conversely, if someone is looking at the APR on a savings account, it doesn’t illustrate the full impact of interest earned over time.

APRs are often a selling point for different financial instruments, such as mortgages or credit cards. When choosing a tool with an APR, be careful to also take into account the APY because it will prove a more accurate number for what you will pay or earn over time. Though the formula for your APR may stay the same, different financial institutions will include different fees in the principal balance. Be aware of what is included in your APR when signing any agreement.

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