Global Payments is a payments technology company providing software and services to merchant locations and financial institutions. Co. operates in three segments: Merchant Solutions, which provides payments technology and software solutions to customers globally; Issuer Solutions, which provides solutions that enable financial institutions and other financial service providers to manage their card portfolios, reduce technical complexity and overhead; and Business and Consumer Solutions, which provides general purpose reloadable prepaid debit and payroll cards, demand deposit accounts and other financial service solutions through its Netspend® brand and other brands.
When researching a stock like Global Payments, many investors are the most familiar with Fundamental Analysis — looking at a company's balance sheet, earnings, revenues, and what's happening in that company's underlying business. Investors who use Fundamental Analysis to identify good stocks to buy or sell can also benefit from GPN Technical Analysis to help find a good entry or exit point. Technical Analysis is blind to the fundamentals and looks only at the trading data for GPN stock — the real life supply and demand for the stock over time — and examines that data in different ways. One of those ways is to calculate a Simpe Moving Average ("SMA") by looking back a certain number of days. One of the most popular "longer look-backs" is the GPN 200 day moving average ("GPN 200 DMA"), while one of the most popular "shorter look-backs" is the GPN 50 day moving average ("GPN 50 DMA"). A chart showing both of these popular moving averages is shown on this page for Global Payments. Comparing two moving averages against each other can be a useful visualization tool: by calculating the difference between the GPN 200 DMA and the GPN 50 DMA, we get a moving average convergence divergence indicator ("GPN MACD"). The GPN MACD chart, in conjunction with the chart of the moving averages, basically helps in visualizing how the moving averages are showing convergence (moving closer together), or divergence (moving farther apart). |