Trend following in stock and index prices has a long and well-established history. I reviewed some of the background in a past article on this topic. For additional examples, see this article. As explained in these pieces, trend following is all about separating the low-frequency persistent part of price variability from the high-frequency part, which may be thought of as the 'noise' of transient effects. Moving averages are one type of trend-following model. Another approach, which I favor, is Fourier analysis. Fourier methods involve the decomposition of a data series (prices, in this case)