Education
Moving-average crosses,
explained with real charts
Every signal below is the exact thing this service watches for. Each guide shows real daily prices for AMZN, MSFT, META and GOOGL — the marked dot is an actual cross event, not an illustration.
Why alerts
Why not just watch the charts?
A golden cross might happen once a year on a stock — but it only helps you if you see it the day it happens. Checking charts daily for every stock you follow doesn't scale. Big charting platforms charge over $50 a month for 500 alerts. On Korpious, the same 500 alerts cost just $5 — no subscription, and credits are only spent when a cross actually fires. New to these signals? Every guide below is explained with real charts.
What you receive
The alert links to the SMA chart
A real golden cross on AMZN: SMA50 through SMA200, already drawn on the candles. Tap the chart link in the alert and this is what you get.
Basics
What is a simple moving average?
An SMA is the average closing price over the last N trading days — SMA50 averages the last 50, SMA200 the last 200. Averaging smooths the day-to-day noise into a line that shows the trend: short averages (SMA50) turn quickly and track momentum; long averages (SMA150, SMA200) turn slowly and describe the long-term regime. The signals traders watch are crosses — the moment one line moves through another.
The signals
The three signal guides
The golden cross
SMA50 crosses above SMA200 — recent buying strong enough to bend the long-term trend upward. One of the most-watched bullish signals in markets, and rare enough that an alert beats watching charts.
Read the golden cross guide →The death cross
The mirror image — SMA50 falls through SMA200. Read as a warning to cut exposure, tighten stops, or hedge before a downtrend deepens.
Read the death cross guide →Price × moving average
The price itself crossing its SMA50, SMA100, SMA150 or SMA200 — from fast momentum signals to the headline-grade 200-day regime line.
Read the price × SMA guide →Beyond crosses
What is the Fear & Greed Index?
Crosses describe one stock at a time. The Fear & Greed Index describes the whole market's mood in a single number from 0 to 100, recomputed after every US market close. When investors get scared they sell and the number falls toward 0 (fear); when they get confident they pile in and it climbs toward 100 (greed).
Korpious shows CNN's widely followed Fear & Greed Index, which blends seven ingredients measured from market data:
- Momentum & strength — is the S&P 500 above its 125-day average, and are more stocks hitting 52-week highs than lows?
- Breadth — is more trading volume flowing into rising or falling stocks?
- Options activity — are traders buying protection (puts) or chasing upside (calls)?
- Volatility — is the VIX elevated compared with its recent norm? Choppier means more fear.
- Safe-haven demand — is money flowing into stocks or hiding in government bonds?
- Risk appetite — are investors chasing risky high-yield bonds or sticking to quality?
Each ingredient is compared with its own recent history and the results are averaged into the score. The scale is divided into five zones — Extreme Fear, Fear, Neutral, Greed, Extreme Greed — and each zone (except Neutral) has two halves: Onset, the half nearer neutral where the mood is just taking hold, and Peak, the extreme half where it is fully developed.
On your dashboard you can pick one zone half and get an alert when the daily index moves into it — and again when it moves out. Many investors read the index as a contrarian signal: extreme fear can mark bargains, extreme greed an overheated market. Like the crosses, it is a description of what has already happened, not a prediction.
Cheat sheet
Reading the signals
| Signal | Direction | Reads as | Speed / noise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Golden cross (SMA50 ↑ SMA200) | Up | Bullish — long-term trend turning up | Slow, rare, high signal |
| Death cross (SMA50 ↓ SMA200) | Down | Bearish — long-term trend turning down | Slow, rare, high signal |
| Price ↑/↓ SMA50 | Either | Momentum shift | Fast, frequent, noisy |
| Price ↑/↓ SMA100 / SMA150 | Either | Intermediate trend change | Medium |
| Price ↑/↓ SMA200 | Either | Regime change | Slow, rare, headline-grade |
Moving-average signals are lagging — they confirm trends, they don't predict them, and they whipsaw in sideways markets. Everything here is for education, not financial advice.