An asymmetric moving average system, in my book, is where you buy according to one moving average and you sell according to another. The economic motivation behind this is that downward moves happen much faster than upward moves, and therefore there will be some value to be had in being more responsive to downward moves while also catching the long upward trends.

At least, that is the theory.

Here is an illustration:

The 20MA user would have got out of the market in mid Jan and would have suffered only one fakeout in early March before catching the generally benign upward climb to the end of March. The 50MA user would have been faked out twice in the last week of January before finally exiting the market almost 2 weeks after the 20MA user had already gone. However, the 50MA user suffers no fakeouts and re-enters the market in ...