Ride the trend with Supertrend

Setup

• Chart: 15-minute candles; Supertrend with default settings (ATR period 10, multiplier 3)
• Supertrend appears as a colored line — green below price (uptrend) or red above price (downtrend)
• Only trade in the direction of the current Supertrend colour

Entry

When Supertrend flips (line moves from above to below price = buy; below to above = sell), enter on the very next candle's open in that direction.

Exit

Exit on the opposite flip. Alternative: exit at end of day if flat, take EOD close-out.

Stop-loss

Use the Supertrend line itself as a trailing stop — the strategy has a built-in exit, so a separate stop is only needed for gap-risk protection (place it a bit beyond the Supertrend line).

When it works

• Trending sessions with clear directional persistence
• High-volume liquid indices (Nifty, BankNifty) or large-cap stocks
• Post-event breakout days (RBI, budget, earnings)

When it fails

• Choppy range days — Supertrend flips repeatedly, generating a series of small losses ("whipsaw")
• Very low ATR sessions — the bands are too tight, false flips
• Around lunch (12-1pm) when volume dries up

General trading rules that apply

Regardless of the specific setup, these apply to every strategy on this site:

• Never risk more than 2% of your account on a single trade
• Place a hard stop-loss before entering — no exceptions
• Journal every trade: setup, reason, outcome, one lesson
• After two consecutive losses, stop for the session
• Backtest and paper-trade for a month before deploying real capital