# EMA

> The exponential moving average of the close, weighted toward recent bars, with an optional bar offset.

The EMA is **a moving average that gives recent bars more weight** than older ones. Because of that it turns sooner than an SMA of the same length. When NQ rips off a morning low, a 9 EMA starts curling up a few bars before the 9 SMA does. The price you pay for that speed is more whipsaw when the market chops sideways.

Reach for it when you care about the current swing: where the short-term trend is and whether price is holding above it or slipping under it.

![The 9 EMA (orange) and 21 EMA (green) tracking an NQ 5m selloff, with the 9 leading the 21 lower](https://www.skylit.ai/docs/images/atlas/indicators/ema.light.webp)

*NQ 5m, Oct 16, 2026 · Atlas*

## Adding the indicator

Open the chart settings panel and use the **Add** button in the Indicators section. EMA sits in the **Overlay** group at the top of the menu, beside SMA and HMA. Each instance gets its own settings cog and can be removed the same way, so you can run a 9 and a 21 side by side, each in its own colour.

## Settings

| Setting | Options | What it controls |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Period | **9** (default), any whole number from 1 to 5,000 | How many bars the average looks back over. |
| Offset | **0** (default), -500 to 500 bars | Shifts the drawn line sideways. Positive moves it right (into the future), negative moves it left. The math doesn't change, only where the line is drawn. |
| Colour | Any colour | Picked from the palette when you add it, changeable any time. |
| Width | **1** (default), 2, 3, 4 | Line thickness. |
| Style | **Solid** (default), Dashed, Dotted | Line pattern. |
| Opacity | 10% to **100%** (default) | How strong the line draws. |
| Label | **Always** (default), On hover, Off | The price-axis badge and the name on the chart. On hover shows them only while the crosshair is close to the line. The crosshair readout keeps showing the value either way. |

## Reading notes

- **It's built from the close.** Each bar contributes its closing price, so the forming bar's value moves with every tick until that bar closes.
- **Warm-up is standard.** The first value appears once a full period of closes exists, seeded from a simple average of those closes. Before that, nothing is drawn.
- **The row label tells you the setup.** An instance reads "EMA 21", and an offset one reads "EMA 21 · +5", so two EMAs on the same chart are easy to tell apart in the list.