Period

In trading, a period is a standardised unit of time used in the monitoring of an asset. For instance, on a candlestick chart each candlestick refers to one period, which depending on the time frame set by the trader could refer to 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours, 1 day, 1 week and 1 month. In the case of a moving average being calculated, the period data used will vary according to the time frame being charted. So a 26 period simple moving average at a chart duration of 1 hour entails the closing prices from 26 hours of trading activity added together and divided by 26. A 26 period moving average charted at the 1 minute duration encapsulates the sum of the closing prices from 26 minutes of trading activity and divided by 26.