MACD (12, 26, 9) — Moving Average Convergence/Divergence
What it measures¶
An exponential moving average (EMA) is an average of recent closes that gives more weight to the newest ones. The MACD line is the 12-session EMA minus the 26-session EMA: positive when the recent average is above the longer one, negative when below. Its own 9-session EMA is called the signal line — the indicator's own name for its smoothed copy. The histogram is the MACD line minus the signal line. All three are in the share's price units.
Why it is on the page¶
It reads momentum as the gap between a fast and a slow average: a widening gap means the move is gathering pace, a narrowing one that it is tiring. Gerald Appel developed it in the late 1970s. The Technical page shows it in the momentum panel; it is not one of the Price & timing strip's votes, because it restates the same averages the Trend tile already counts.
Thresholds, their source and the population they were fitted on¶
MACD has no fixed zones: it is unbounded and in price units, so the same value means different things for different shares. It is read by its sign and its direction:
| Reading | What it describes |
|---|---|
| MACD line above 0 | the fast average is above the slow one |
| MACD line crossing above the signal line | recent momentum improving |
| histogram rising | the gap between the two lines widening upwards |
- Source: Gerald Appel's MACD; the (12, 26, 9) settings are his.
- Fitted on: no statistical sample; no peer-reviewed test of the line-and-signal-line crossing as a stand-alone rule on daily data was found.
- Evidence grade: practitioner convention.
A worked example¶
Celestica, as the Technical page showed it on 9 August 2026: MACD line −7.07, signal line −9.97, histogram +2.90 — momentum still negative, but the gap narrowing upwards.
What “No verdict” means here¶
MACD carries no verdict and no vote. The row reads insufficient data until about 35 daily bars are stored (26 for the slow average, 9 more for the signal line).
What the verdict is and is not¶
The figures describe how two averages of the price relate to each other. Built from averages, they lag the price by construction; a crossing is a description of what already happened. It is not a forecast and not an instruction to trade the shares.