Glossary / Trend & momentum
DMA stack
Also called: moving average stack · MA stack · stacked moving averages
A DMA stack describes a chart where several day-moving averages of different lengths sit in order — the shortest above the next-shortest, and so on down to the longest. Traders call the arrangement 'stacked' when the ordering is unbroken.
How it is measured
How is DMA stack measured?
Plot two or more day-moving averages of different window lengths on the same price series — commonly a short, a medium and a long window — and check whether their current values are ordered by window length. Ordered shortest-highest is one arrangement; ordered shortest-lowest is the inverse; anything else is unstacked.
Why it matters
Why does DMA stack matter to a swing trader?
The arrangement compresses several lookback windows into one glance: a stack in ordering means the short-window average, the medium-window average and the long-window average have all been moving the same way relative to each other. Swing traders watch it as a summary of how consistent a multi-month move has been. It says nothing about what happens next, and the stack re-orders only after the underlying prices have already moved.
In Tapeline
Does Tapeline use DMA stack?
Not an input to any Tapeline factor. The Trend factor reads a multi-month price change and the position of price inside the 52-week range instead.
Tapeline publishes the six factor names and the ordering of their weights. The numeric weights, the scoring equation and the band edges are not published.
Related
See this in the product
What the Trend factor measures · The Trend factor · Full methodology
Related terms
Back to the full glossary.
General information about market vocabulary, written to be descriptive rather than prescriptive. Not investment advice — see the risk disclosure.