3. Types of smoothing methods
• There are two distinct groups of smoothing
methods
• 1.Averaging Methods (moving average)
• 2.Weigted averaging methods
• 3.Exponential Smoothing Methods
4. Averaging method
• A moving average is a technique to get an overall idea
of the trends in a data set, it is an average of any
subset of numbers. The moving average is extremely
useful for forecasting long-term trends.
5. Weighted Moving average method
• A Weighted Moving Average puts more weight on recent data
and less on past data.This is done by multiplying each bar’s
price by a weighting factor. Because of its unique calculation,
WMA will follow prices more closely than a corresponding
Simple Moving Average.
• Calculation:
• WMA = (P1 * 5) + (P2 * 4) + (P3 * 3) + (P4 * 2) + (P5 * 1) / (5 +
4+ 3 + 2 + 1)
• Where:
• P1 = current price
• P2 = price one bar ago, etc…
6. Exponential Smoothing method
• Exponential smoothing of time series data assigns
exponentially decreasing weights for newest to oldest
observations. In other words, the older the data, the less
priority (“weight”) the data is given; newer data is seen as
more relevant and is assigned more weight. Smoothing
parameters (smoothing constants)— usually denoted by α—
determine the weights for observations.
7. Example
• Sales of Bradl brand for the past ten weeks at NYSE
are shown on the next slide. If NYSE uses a 3-
period moving average to forecast sales, what is the
forecast for Week 6?