Ok, I made this too easy. What I really want is a 5 and 8 period moving average but created a small subset of test data. In the past I was just applying a WHERE condition with a fixed date. However, that does not work as some groups have not been updated in a long time.

Let's say using the test data that I want a 3 period moving average using the last 3 values for each group.



>>I need to retrieve the top 2 most current rows (using date) for each group (A, B, C). I have created some sample data and the expected results. Anyone got a solution?
>>
>Try

>SELECT group,  date  ;
>	FROM temp t1 ;
>	WHERE date >= ( ;
>	SELECT MAX(date) FROM temp t2 ;
>    	WHERE t2.group = t1.group ;
>    		AND date < (SELECT MAX(date) FROM temp t3 ;
>					    WHERE t3.group = t2.group)) ;
>UNION ;
>SELECT group,  date  ;
>	FROM temp t1 ;
>	WHERE date >= ( ;
>	SELECT MAX(date) FROM temp t2 ;
>    	        WHERE t2.group = t1.group )
>