Supertrend flips green (buy) or red (sell) based on ATR bands. Trade in the direction of the flip; hold until the next flip or end of session. Simple, mechanical, avoids over-analysis.
Timeframe: 5m / 15m
Indicators: Supertrend (10,3)
Ride the trend with Supertrend — illustrative synthetic chartSupertrend
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
Educational content only
Every strategy here is an educational description of a widely-known technical setup. Past behavior does not guarantee future results. The chart above uses synthetic price data generated for illustration — real market behavior varies. Backtest, paper-trade, and size responsibly before risking real capital.