Supertrend Periods and Multipliers: 36 Settings Tested

Supertrend arrives with two numbers attached: an ATR period of 10 and a multiplier of 3. Both are editable, but they do not affect the result equally.

I moved both. Six periods by six multipliers is 36 combinations, backtested across the whole of 2025 on USD/JPY, on three timeframes, then run again on 2024.

The period did almost nothing. Taking it from 5 to 30 (six times wider) moved the hourly trade count between 205 and 212 a year, and the average result by 406 pips.

The multiplier did the work. From 1.5 to 5, the trade count went from 408 a year to 80.

hourly, 2025 — trades per year, averaged over every value of the other knob

What Supertrend calculates

1. Average True Range over N bars ← the period
2. Bands placed above and below the midpoint at ATR × multiplier ← the multiplier
3. Price breaking a band sets the trend direction; the line trails on the other side

ATR period and multiplier affect the band differently:

• Changing the period changes how many bars go into the ATR. On USD/JPY the ATR at period 5 and at period 30 are close to each other, so the band width hardly moves
• Changing the multiplier scales that ATR directly. The band width moves with it

Band width sets how often price breaks through. So the multiplier alone sets the trade count.

The measurements say the same thing, and the figure at the top of this article is that comparison.

(Hourly bars, 2025. Period values are averaged over all six multipliers, and multiplier values over all six periods.)

Adding Supertrend to a chart

How this was measured

Period or multiplier: which matters?

The multiplier moved the result.

profitlosshourly · colour depth = size of the year's net result · rows = period, columns = multiplier

Hourly bars, 2025, net pips:

Reading down a column produces no pattern. Reading across, four of the six entries in the 1.5 column are negative, and 2.5 and 4 are the good ones.

The same grid for 2024:

The 2.5 column averages worst here (+77 pips) and the 5 column best (+1,926). In 2025 that same 2.5 column leads at +1,227, with 5 third from bottom at +293. One multiplier is the best of the six in one year and the worst in the other.

Is the 10 and 3 default good enough?

On 15-minute and hourly bars the default was profitable in both years. Of the indicators tested this way, Supertrend is the only one whose default held up that cleanly.

The period-30, multiplier-5 setting fell from +2,663.7 pips in 2024 to +52.2 pips in 2025. The setting with the largest annual net in one year was not necessarily the largest in the next.

Which timeframe suits Supertrend?

Only four-hour collapses, and there is a reason.

The best four-hour combination of 2024 was period 30 with a multiplier of 5:

Fifteen trades. A profit factor of 5.04 means nine wins out of fifteen and nothing more. The next year it lost 2,235.9 pips.

Four-hour combinations trade 26 to 110 times a year, and raising the multiplier lowers that further (the multiplier-5 row runs 26 to 29) so multiplier 5 on four-hour bars is structurally a setting whose numbers swing. The better it looks, the less it means.

How much spread can it absorb?

Trading rarely is this indicator's practical advantage.

Supertrend 10/3Aroon 25 crossoverQQE 17/3/4.236RVI 10dashed line = trades × 2.0 pips

Every one is exactly trades × spread. Supertrend trades least of the four, so it pays least.

The hourly version keeps +863.4 pips even at a 2.0 pip spread. The 15-minute version crosses just below zero.

Can win rate choose the setting?

Not on its own. On hourly bars in 2025, larger multipliers reduced the trade count and included many of the larger win-rate and annual-net results. But the multiplier-5 mean was +293 pips in 2025 and +1,926 pips in 2024, so the size of that result still depended on the year.

Filters, added to the default:

ADX lowered the result in both years. Screening for trend strength on something that is already a trend-following signal removed profit, not risk.

Two conditions stayed positive in both years: ADX ≥ 20 (+673.0 and +825.9) and London/NY hours (+571.7 and +1,378.7). Both land below the unfiltered +1,121.8 in 2025, so they hold the sign without adding anything.

Stops and targets

All six made money in both years: a first in this series. And stop 100 / target 200 beat holding to the opposite flip in both years (+2,952.4 and +1,291.8). A wide stop with a wide target did better than waiting for the indicator to turn.

Stop 50 / target 50 puts the win rate above 50% in both years (55.07% and 51.72%) without adding profit.

The ATR period and comparison-window test isolates the same volatility input and asks whether period 14 works as a trading-rule default. The same method applied to Parabolic SAR, QQE, Aroon, RVI and moving average crossovers. Building the rules without code is how to repeat any of it on your own pair.

Notes

• One pair, two years
• Supertrend implementations differ in how the ATR is averaged (simple or Wilder) and in the band's trailing rule. These figures come from Formiq's
• Entries and exits both fill at bar closes
• The spread is modelled as a flat 0.3 pips for the whole period
• Four-hour combinations trade 26 to 110 times a year. Win rates and profit factors at that count are wide numbers before anything else is said about them