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The 20 EMA: Only One Day in 16 Years Never Touched It

Contents
  1. Only one day in 16 years without a touch
  2. Al Brooks remembered that day too
  3. When the first touch comes: not necessarily at the open
  4. Away from the EMA: a streak usually lasts 3 bars
  5. Definition and how to reproduce it
  6. Limitations

Bottom line: on the 5-minute ES RTH chart, 99.97% of days touch the 20 EMA. In 16 years and 3,857 days, only 2024-01-08 never touched it, the same day Al Brooks pointed out in his live room.

But it doesn’t necessarily happen right away: only 17.3% of days touch it on the first bar, 60.6% by 10:30 and 81.7% by 11:30.

How I use it: when the open is far from the EMA, I can be fairly sure price will come back to it at some point today, but it might take two or three hours. It works as a “will get there today” target, not as a reason to expect an immediate reversal.

“Price comes back to the moving average every day” is something you hear a lot in trading, and Al Brooks says it often in his live room. I used the 5-minute ES chart from 2010 to 2026 to check three things: how many days touch the 20 EMA? When does the first touch come? Once price leaves the EMA, how many bars in a row does it stay away?

2010–2026 · RTH days that touch the 20 EMA

99.97%

Sample 3,857 days · No touch: 2024-01-08

Which bar touches the EMA firstX axis: the close of each 5-minute RTH bar. Y axis: share of days that have touched the EMA by that bar.

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%10:0011:0012:0013:0014:0015:0016:00 Bar 1 already touches: 17.3%

Once away from the EMA, how many bars in a rowAway = the whole bar is above the EMA (low > EMA) or below it (high < EMA); consecutive bars form one streak, reset at each open. Y axis: streaks at least this long as a share of all streaks, on a log scale (each gridline down is 10× smaller). Counted by day instead: 56.9% of days have at least one streak of 20+ bars.

Above the EMA Below the EMA
0.1% 1% 10% 100%1102030405060 20 bars

20 EMA = 20-period exponential moving average of 5-minute closes, RTH bars only, carried from day to day. Touch = the EMA sits between the bar's high and low. The streak chart counts streaks, not days: in the selected years there are 18,719 streaks above the EMA and 16,191 below, about 9.1 a day, and the percentage in the tooltip is the share of all streaks on that side that lasted at least that many bars. Hover (or tap) the charts to see the numbers.

Only one day in 16 years without a touch

Al Brooks remembered that day too

I found two passages about it in transcripts of Al Brooks’ 2024 live sessions:

Both passages refer to January 8, 2024. The data also has only that one day in 16 years, and 99.97% falls right between his 99.9% and 99.99%. What Al said matches the data.

When the first touch comes: not necessarily at the open

By barTimeAlready touched
Bar 19:3517.3%
Bar 610:0040.5%
Bar 1210:3060.6%
Bar 1811:0072.7%
Bar 2411:3081.7%
Bar 3612:3091.6%

On many days the open is already near the EMA, so touching it on the first bar is common. Could most of the “touches” just be bar 1? No: bar 1 accounts for only about 17%. On more than 80% of days, price leaves the EMA after the open and then comes back to touch it.

But how long it takes to come back varies a lot: 40% of days still haven’t touched it by 10:30, and 10% by midday. So “price will touch the EMA today” is right, but “price will come back to the EMA right after the open” is not.

Away from the EMA: a streak usually lasts 3 bars

When a whole bar is above the EMA (low above the EMA) or below it (high below the EMA), price is “away from the EMA”; consecutive bars like this form a streak.

How streaks are counted: each day, start from 5-minute bar 1. Consecutive bars above the EMA form one streak above; once a bar touches the EMA or moves to the other side, the streak ends, and going back above starts a new streak. A single bar above, followed by a bar that touches the EMA, still counts as a streak (of length 1). A streak still running at the close is cut off there, and counting starts over at the next open. Streaks below work the same way.

For example, a day might look like this (an illustration, not real data):

BarsRelative to the EMACounted as
1–3Touch—
4–9AboveStreak 1 above (6 bars)
10Touch—
11–12AboveStreak 2 above (2 bars)
13–20BelowStreak 1 below (8 bars)
21Touch—
22 onAboveStreak 3 above

That day has 3 streaks above and 1 below. Adding up the streaks on all 3,857 days gives these totals:

As for how long these streaks last:

A streak of 20+ bars without touching the EMA is rare as a single streak, but not rare by day: a day has many streaks, and it only takes one long enough, so 56.9% of days have at least one streak of 20 bars or more.

Al Brooks calls this “20 gap bars”: when price goes about 20 or more bars without touching the moving average, the first return to it usually draws buyers near the moving average (sellers in a downtrend). This post only counts how often it happens; it doesn’t test what comes next. That’s for a separate study.

Definition and how to reproduce it

20 EMA

  • Data: cleaned 1-minute ES bars, 2010-06 to 2026-09. See how I cleaned it.
  • 20 EMA: 20-period exponential moving average of the closes of 5-minute RTH bars (09:30–16:15 US Eastern), alpha = 2 / 21. RTH bars only, carried from day to day, no overnight session.
  • 5-minute slots with no trades: during the March 2020 circuit-breaker halts, 7 five-minute bars had no trades; the EMA skips them and stays unchanged.
  • Contract rolls: on the first day of a new contract the EMA restarts and that day isn’t counted (66 days, plus the first day of the data, which takes the sample from 3,924 days to 3,857).
  • Touch: low ≤ EMA ≤ high, using the EMA’s value after the bar closes, i.e. the value drawn on the chart.
  • Away from the EMA: low > EMA (above) or high < EMA (below).
  • Streak: consecutive bars all above the EMA (or all below) form a streak, which ends when a bar touches the EMA or moves to the other side. A single bar counts as a streak. Counting restarts at each open, and a streak still running at the close is cut off there.
  • Streaks above / below: the number of streaks above (below) the EMA, added up over all days. Over 16 years: 18,719 above and 16,191 below, 34,910 in total, about 9 a day. The note under the chart updates when you change the years.
  • Streak share: the percentage for “at least L bars in a row” in the chart = streaks of length ≥ L ÷ all streaks on the same side. It’s counted by streak, not by day.
  • By day: a day counts if it has at least one streak of 20 bars or more; 56.9% of days do.

Limitations


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