What Is a Technical Indicator?

Technical indicators are heuristic or pattern-based signals produced by the price, volume, and/or open interest of a security or contract used by traders who follow technical analysis.

By analyzing historical data, technical analysts use indicators to predict future price movements. Examples of common technical indicators include the Relative Strength Index (RSI), Money Flow Index (MFI), stochastics, moving average convergence divergence (MACD), and Bollinger Bands®.

How Technical Indicators Work

Technical analysis is a trading discipline employed to evaluate investments and identify trading opportunities by analyzing statistical trends gathered from trading activity, such as price movement and volume. Unlike fundamental analysts, who attempt to evaluate a security’s intrinsic value based on financial or economic data, technical analysts focus on patterns of price movements, trading signals, and various other analytical charting tools to evaluate a security’s strength or weakness.

Technical analysis can be used on any security with historical trading data. This includes stocks, futures, commodities, fixed-income, currencies, and other securities. In this tutorial, we’ll usually analyze stocks in our examples, but keep in mind that these concepts can be applied to any type of security. In fact, technical analysis is far more prevalent in commodities and forex markets, where traders focus on short-term price movements.

Technical indicators, also known as “technicals,” are focused on historical trading data, such as price, volume, and open interest, rather than the fundamentals of a business, such as earnings, revenue, or profit margins. Technical indicators are commonly used by active traders, since they’re designed to analyze short-term price movements, but long-term investors may also use technical indicators to identify entry and exit points.

Types of Indicators

There are two basic types of technical indicators:

1. Overlays: Technical indicators that use the same scale as prices are plotted over the top of the prices on a stock chart. Examples include moving averages and Bollinger Bands®.
2. Oscillators: Technical indicators that oscillate between a local minimum and maximum are plotted above or below a price chart. Examples include the stochastic oscillator, MACD, or RSI.

Traders often use many different technical indicators when analyzing a security. With thousands of different options, traders must choose the indicators that work best for them and familiarize themselves with how they work. Traders may also combine technical indicators with more subjective forms of technical analysis, such as looking at chart patterns, to come up with trade ideas. Technical indicators can also be incorporated into automated trading systems, given their quantitative nature.

Example of Technical Indicators

The following chart shows some of the most common technical indicators, including moving averages, the RSI, and the MACD.

In this example, the 50- and 200-day moving averages are plotted over the top of the prices to show where the current price stands relative to its historical averages. The 50-day moving averages is higher than the 200-day moving average in this case, which suggests that the overall trend has been positive. The RSI above the chart shows the strength of the current trend—a neutral 49.07, in this case. The MACD below the chart shows how the two moving averages have converged or diverged—slightly bearish, in this case.

What Is Average Return?

The average return is the simple mathematical average of a series of returns generated over a specified period of time. An average return is calculated the same way that a simple average is calculated for any set of numbers. The numbers are added together into a single sum, then the sum is divided by the count of the numbers in the set.

Understanding Average Return

There are several return measures and ways to calculate them. For the arithmetic average return, one takes the sum of the returns and divides it by the number of return figures.

$\text{Average Return} = \dfrac{\text{Sum of Returns}}{\text{Number of Returns}}$Average Return=Number of ReturnsSum of Returns​

The average return tells an investor or analyst what the returns for a stock or security have been in the past, or what the returns of a portfolio of companies are. The average return is not the same as an annualized return, as it ignores compounding.

Average Return Example

One example of average return is the simple arithmetic mean. For instance, suppose an investment returns the following annually over a period of five full years: 10%, 15%, 10%, 0%, and 5%. To calculate the average return for the investment over this five-year period, the five annual returns are added together and then divided by 5. This produces an annual average return of 8%.

Now, let’s look at a real-life example. Shares of Walmart returned 9.1% in 2014, lost 28.6% in 2015, gained 12.8% in 2016, gained 42.9% in 2017, and lost 5.7% in 2018. The average return of Walmart over those five years is 6.1%, or 30.5% divided by 5 years.

Calculating Returns From Growth

The simple growth rate is a function of the beginning and ending values or balances. It is calculated by subtracting the ending value from the beginning value and then dividing by the beginning value. The formula is as follows:

$\begin{aligned} &\text{Growth Rate} = \dfrac{\text{BV} -\text{EV}}{\text{BV}}\\ &\textbf{where:}\\ &\text{BV} = \text{Beginning Value}\\ &\text{EV} = \text{Ending Value}\\ \end{aligned}$​Growth Rate=BVBV−EV​where:BV=Beginning ValueEV=Ending Value​

For example, if you invest $10,000 in a company and the stock price increases from $50 to $100, then the return can be calculated by taking the difference between $100 and $50 and dividing by $50. The answer is 100%, which means you now have $20,000.

Average Return Alternatives

Geometric Average

When looking at average historical returns, the geometric average is a more precise calculation. The geometric mean is always lower than the average return. One benefit of using the geometric mean is that the actual amounts invested need not be known. The calculation focuses entirely on the return figures themselves and presents an apples-to-apples comparison when looking at two or more investments’ performances over more various time periods.

The geometric average return is sometimes called the time-weighted rate of return (TWR) because it eliminates the distorting effects on growth rates created by various inflows and outflows of money into an account over time.

Money-Weighted Rate of Return (MWRR)

Alternatively, the money-weighted rate of return (MWRR) incorporates the size and timing of cash flows, making it an effective measure for returns on a portfolio that has received deposits, dividend reinvestments, and/or interest payments, or has had withdrawals.

The MWRR is equivalent to the internal rate of return (IRR), where the net present value equals zero.