Simple Moving Average (SMA)
Calculate the Moving Average (MA) for a given price series.
The Moving Average (MA) is a commonly used technical indicator that smooths out price data by calculating the average price over a specified number of periods.
The formula is as follows:
\[\text{MA} = (\text{Sum of Prices}) / (\text{Number of Prices})\]Also known as: SMA, simple moving average, MA.
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Calculate the Simple Moving Average (SMA) in Python
The Simple Moving Average (SMA) is available in the Technicals module of the open-source Finance Toolkit. Install it with:
pip install financetoolkit -U
Then call get_moving_average as shown below.
from financetoolkit import Toolkit
toolkit = Toolkit(tickers=["AAPL", "MSFT"])
toolkit.technicals.get_moving_average()
Which returns:
| Date | AAPL | MSFT | Benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-18 | 300.742 | 408.527 | 745.79 |
| 2026-06-22 | 300.078 | 401.871 | 744.779 |
| 2026-06-23 | 298.585 | 397.059 | 742.923 |
| 2026-06-24 | 297.358 | 392.639 | 741.423 |
| 2026-06-25 | 294.781 | 387.266 | 739.795 |
| 2026-06-26 | 293.098 | 384.145 | 739.184 |
| 2026-06-29 | 291.684 | 381.061 | 739.311 |
| 2026-06-30 | 291.599 | 378.891 | 740.005 |
| 2026-07-01 | 291.799 | 377.956 | 741.457 |
| 2026-07-02 | 292.727 | 377.967 | 741.959 |
Parameters
get_moving_average accepts the following parameters:
- period (str, optional): The time period to consider for historical data. Can be “daily”, “weekly”, “quarterly”, or “yearly”. Defaults to “daily”.
- close_column (str, optional): The column name for closing prices in the historical data. Defaults to “Adj Close”.
- window (int, optional): Number of periods to consider for the moving average. The number of periods (time intervals) over which to calculate the MA.
- rounding (int | None, optional): The number of decimals to round the results to. Defaults to 4.
- growth (bool, optional): Whether to calculate the growth of the MA. Defaults to False.
- lag (int | list[int], optional): The lag to use for the growth calculation.
- standardize (bool, optional): Whether to standardize (Z-Score) the result. When combined with growth=True, standardizes the growth values instead of the raw values. Defaults to False. Defaults to 1.
Related Overlap Indicators
The Technicals module page introduces the module, and the sidebar lists all of its functions.