# WMA (Weighted Moving Average)

> The weighted moving average is a moving average whose weights decline linearly across the window, so the newest close counts most and the oldest counts least — a middle path between the SMA and EMA.

Canonical: https://patternsradar.com/learn/wma

The WMA assigns weights in a straight line: in a 20-bar window the newest close carries a weight of 20, the next 19, down to 1 for the oldest, and the weighted sum is divided by the total. Every bar still matters — unlike the EMA, whose influence technically never reaches zero, the WMA's window has a hard edge — but the recent ones matter proportionally more, which pulls the line closer to current price than an SMA of the same period.

In practice the 20-day WMA is used the same way a 20-day SMA or EMA is: as a swing-trend line that price should respect in a healthy move. Traders who prefer it argue that linear weighting is the honest compromise — more responsive than the SMA without the EMA's long memory tail. Screening for closes holding above it, or for price reclaiming it after a dip on volume, are the standard uses on daily bars.

Its weakness is that it inherits both families' problems in moderation rather than escaping either: it lags a turn more than an EMA of the same length, and it whipsaws in a range more than an SMA. It is also the least-watched of the three, which matters — part of a moving average's usefulness is self-fulfilling, and fewer eyes on a line means less behaviour anchored to it.

The WMA is best understood as the halfway house, and the HMA as what happens when you refuse to stop there — Alan Hull's average is built out of WMAs combined specifically to cancel the lag this one still carries. If the 20-day WMA and SMA are telling you different things about a chart, the difference is recent price action, by construction.

## In Sift

Written as `wma(20)`. A working scan — stocks above their 20-day weighted average on half again the usual volume:

```sift
where close > wma(20) and rel_volume > 1.5
```

1 of the 500 most-traded NSE stocks match today, as of 2026-08-20.

## Common questions

### What is the difference between WMA and EMA?

Both weight recent prices more, but differently. The WMA's weights fall in a straight line and stop dead at the window's edge — bar 21 of a 20-bar WMA has zero influence. The EMA's weights decay geometrically and never quite reach zero. In practice the EMA of a given period reacts slightly faster; the WMA is the more literal compromise between SMA and EMA.

### Is the weighted moving average better for trading?

No moving average is better in general — each trades lag against noise at a different rate, and which trade pays depends on the stock and the holding period. The WMA sits between SMA and EMA on that spectrum. Rather than take any claim on faith, run the same condition with each average through the hit-rate replay and compare.