A moving average can be any time frame that you want. But what is the best moving average to use? The answer to this question depends on what length trend you are concentrating on.

Short term trends – A short term trader will use a short moving average. He or she may use a 2 or 3 day moving average to help identify the start and finish of short term trends.

As an extreme, an intraday trader may use a 30 or 60 minute moving average.

Medium term trends – A medium term trader will use somewhere between a 22 day and 40 day moving average. A 30 day moving average is the most widely used.

Long term trends – A longer term trend uses a longer moving average. For example, a 170 day moving average can be helpful in identifying the longer term movements of the share price.

The chart above shows that the 170 day moving average is trending down, so this stock has been in a long term downtrend.
The IntegraStock software has 30, 50 and 170 day moving averages as default. You can change these however at your discretion.