What are the best Supertrend settings?

There is no setting that is right independently of what you want from the signal, but the grid narrows the question usefully: pick the multiplier for the trade frequency you can live with, and stop worrying about the ATR period, which barely moves it on daily bars. A multiplier of 3 over a 10-session ATR is a common default and the one we run; 1.5 to 2 turns the same chart into three to four times as many signals.

How is the Supertrend line calculated?

Take the midpoint of each bar, measure recent volatility as the Average True Range over the chosen period, and place a band that many ATRs above and below the midpoint, multiplied by your multiplier. The line follows the lower band while the trend is up and the upper band while it is down, and it only ever moves in the trend's favour until price closes through it — which is the flip.

Do these numbers match your screener?

The line is computed by the same code, on the same price history, so the direction changes at period 10 and multiplier ×3 are the ones our scanner sees. What the screener publishes is a smaller set: it applies the ADX confirmation and a coverage universe of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, so a flip listed here on one of these four symbols will not necessarily appear there.

Supertrend Calculator: What Do the Settings Actually Change?

Name: Pattern Vista
Price: 9.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Pattern Vista

Across 4 daily charts and 250 sessions each, moving the band multiplier from 1.5 to 4 changes the number of Supertrend direction changes by as much as 21. Moving the ATR period from 7 to 20 changes it by at most 3. On daily bars the multiplier is the setting that matters; the period barely is.

Pick a cell and the grid shows you every direction change those settings would have produced, when each happened, and what the ADX read that day. Computed with the same code our scanner runs, on the same price history.

Compare settings on a real chart

Symbol:

Direction changes on AMZN over 250 sessions, 2025-09-04 to 2026-09-01. Pick a cell for the detail.
ATR period	×1.5	×2	×2.5	×3	×3.5	×4
7 sessions
10 sessions
14 sessions
20 sessions

Each cell counts the direction changes at those settings, with the number that landed on a session where ADX(14) was at or above 25 in brackets. The shaded cell — period 10, multiplier ×3 — is what our own scanner runs.

AMZN at period 10, multiplier ×3

9 direction changes over 239 sessions, 1 of them on a day the ADX called the trend strong — roughly 24 sessions per stretch.

2025-09-042026-09-01

Date	New direction	ADX(14) that session
2025-10-28	Bullish	27.2
2025-11-18	Bearish	23.6below threshold
2026-01-06	Bullish	10.2below threshold
2026-01-20	Bearish	12.8below threshold
2026-04-08	Bullish	14.2below threshold
2026-06-03	Bearish	24.6below threshold
2026-07-15	Bullish	22.6below threshold
2026-07-28	Bearish	19.5below threshold
2026-07-31	Bullish	20.3below threshold

Why the multiplier moves the signal count and the period does not

The band sits a fixed number of ATRs away from the midpoint of each bar, so the multiplier scales its width directly: at ×4 it is more than twice as far from price as at ×1.5, and price has to travel more than twice as far to close through it. The ATR period only changes how much smoothing goes into that distance, and on daily bars an ATR measured over 7 sessions is within a few percent of one measured over 20. That is the whole asymmetry, and it is visible in every column of the grid above. The usual advice — shorten the period for more signals — is describing an effect that is real but small next to the one nobody mentions.

Worth saying plainly what this is: four symbols, daily bars, one year of history. It is a demonstration of how the parameters behave, not a backtest, and a lower flip count is not the same thing as a better one — a wide band that changes direction twice a year will also sit through the reversal you wanted it to catch.

What our scanner runs, and why

Period 10, multiplier ×3, with a 14-period ADX required to confirm that the move had trend strength behind it. The ADX filter is doing most of the work: in the bracketed numbers above, most direction changes arrive on sessions where the ADX says there is no trend to follow, and those are precisely the whipsaws that make a trend-following line expensive in a sideways market.

Supertrend screener: what flipped lately

Questions readers ask

What are the best Supertrend settings?: There is no setting that is right independently of what you want from the signal, but the grid narrows the question usefully: pick the multiplier for the trade frequency you can live with, and stop worrying about the ATR period, which barely moves it on daily bars. A multiplier of 3 over a 10-session ATR is a common default and the one we run; 1.5 to 2 turns the same chart into three to four times as many signals.
How is the Supertrend line calculated?: Take the midpoint of each bar, measure recent volatility as the Average True Range over the chosen period, and place a band that many ATRs above and below the midpoint, multiplied by your multiplier. The line follows the lower band while the trend is up and the upper band while it is down, and it only ever moves in the trend's favour until price closes through it — which is the flip.
Do these numbers match your screener?: The line is computed by the same code, on the same price history, so the direction changes at period 10 and multiplier ×3 are the ones our scanner sees. What the screener publishes is a smaller set: it applies the ADX confirmation and a coverage universe of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, so a flip listed here on one of these four symbols will not necessarily appear there.