Supertrend is on almost every second chart I see: a green line below the price means buy; a red line above it means sell. It looks too simple to work, so I did what I always do: I coded a robot for MetaTrader 5 and ran it on seven markets over 72 months. In its “internet” form it barely wins. But I found a setup that survived the toughest test, two years of data the optimizer never saw: a robot for USDJPY on H4. I’ll show you what it did, what its trades look like, where its risks are, and how to download it for free.
- +40% in 72 months on USDJPY H4, risking just 1% per trade. Maximum drawdown: 4.8%.
- +11% in the forward test (10/2024–09/2026) with a profit factor of 2.24: the robot made money on data it didn’t see during tuning.
- Risking 2% per trade, the same robot returned +96% in 72 months with a 9.6% drawdown.
- In the file: the robot for MetaTrader 5, the .set file for USDJPY H4, and the instructions. You can get it running in 5 minutes.
📊 Download the free robot on Telegram
What the robot does
The Supertrend indicator was popularized by the French trader Olivier Seban. The robot uses its standard parameters, ATR period 10 and multiplier 3, and works like this:
- Entry: an H4 candle closes above the Supertrend line. The trend has turned bullish and the robot buys at the open of the next candle. In the working set there are no sells: only buys, in line with the pair’s main movement.
- Stop: at the Supertrend line. Every four hours the robot moves it up behind the line; the stop never moves back.
- Take profit: three initial stops. The profit target is three times the risk.
- Position size: based on the risk as a % of balance. In the test, 1%; in the parameters you can set your own.
It’s a trend robot: it doesn’t try to guess the reversal, it follows the move. Half of the trades close at the stop, but the winners are on average twice as large as the losers, and that’s where the result comes from.
What it looks like on the chart
Below are two real trades by the robot in the USDJPY H4 test. Both are from the forward period, which the optimizer didn’t see: one winner and one loser, so you can see the robot as it really is.
Winning trade. For a week USDJPY was in a bearish Supertrend, with the red line near 151.20. On December 9, 2024, a four-hour candle closed at 151.327, above the line. The trend changed and the robot bought at the open of the next candle, at 151.328. The line moved below the price, to 149.289, and that’s where the stop went. Take profit, three stops: 157.445. After that the line kept rising behind the price, and on December 19 the pair reached the target: +$350.
Losing trade. On March 3, 2025, the candle closed at 150.969, above the red line at 150.687. The same signal as in December. The robot bought at 150.971, with the stop on the line, at 148.917, and take profit at 157.132. But the rally ended before it started: overnight the pair fell and hit the stop, −$124. That’s what any false trend change looks like. The system can’t know in advance which one is the real one, so the stop here isn’t a failure: it’s the price of getting into the moves that are real.
Manually: add the Supertrend indicator with parameters 10 and 3 to the USDJPY H4 chart (in TradingView it comes in the standard set; for MetaTrader 5 there are free versions in the Market). Wait for a candle to close above the red line and for the line to turn green below the price. Buy at the open of the next candle, place the stop at the green line and the take profit at three times the stop distance. While the trade is open, move the stop to the new line value every four hours.
Robot results: training and forward
To avoid fooling myself with overfitting, I split the history into two parts. The parameters are chosen using only 10/2020–09/2024. Then the robot takes the exam on 10/2024–09/2026, months the optimizer didn’t see. The test: MetaTrader 5 strategy tester, a demo account at FxPro with its quotes, spreads, commissions and swaps, $10,000 deposit, 1:500 leverage, “1 minute OHLC” mode.
| Period (USDJPY H4) | Return | Profit factor | Max drawdown | Trades |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Training, 10/2020–09/2024 | +25.4% | 2.01 | 4.8% | 87 |
| Forward, 10/2024–09/2026 | +11.3% | 2.24 | 3.0% | 38 |
| All 72 months, 1% risk | +40.2% | 2.09 | 4.8% | 125 |
| All 72 months, 2% risk | +96.4% | 2.08 | 9.6% | 125 |
The most important thing here is the forward test. On unseen data, the profit factor ended up even slightly higher than in training. Neighboring settings (period 6–10, different take profits) also passed the forward test in positive territory: of 95 profitable sets in training, 75 stayed positive in the forward test. In other words, the robot doesn’t depend on a single lucky number. Over 72 months, commissions took only $102, and the swaps on USDJPY buys at FxPro added $488.
📊 Download the robot and the parameters for USDJPY H4
Why the “internet” Supertrend doesn’t work and this one does
First I ran Supertrend the way it’s usually recommended: daily chart, buys and sells, reversing at every color change, no take profit. Seven markets, 72 months:
| Instrument (D1) | Result | Profit factor | Max drawdown | Trades |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BITCOIN | +8.5% | 1.40 | 10.4% | 53 |
| USDJPY | +8.2% | 1.72 | 4.5% | 37 |
| WTI (oil) | −3.2% | 0.67 | 7.1% | 27 |
| EURUSD | −5.1% | 0.59 | 7.5% | 40 |
| GBPUSD | −5.5% | 0.57 | 8.6% | 42 |
| USDCHF | −8.1% | 0.56 | 10.5% | 44 |
| GOLD | −10.0% | 0.54 | 14.7% | 31 |
Positive in only two markets out of seven, and modestly so. There are three reasons:
- On the daily chart there are very few signals: 5–9 a year, and half of them are false.
- Sells against the pair’s main movement eat up what the buys earned. On USDJPY H4 the version with sells returned barely +6% in six years, and the swaps on the sells took $1,125.
- Without a take profit, the robot gives a large part of its profit back to the market while waiting for the color change.
The robot that works differs in exactly that: H4 instead of D1, buys only, and a take profit of three stops. The indicator and its parameters 10 and 3 stayed as the author left them. On USDJPY D1 and on bitcoin, a setup like this didn’t pass the forward test; that’s why the robot is configured only for USDJPY H4, and I don’t recommend taking it to other markets without your own testing.
The risks, with no makeup
- The robot buys USDJPY. If the yen starts to appreciate sharply, it will keep piling up stops. An example from this market: the summer of 2024, when in one month the pair fell from 161.95 to 141.68.
- Japanese interventions can blow through the stop with slippage, and the loss can be larger than the risk you set.
- A streak of four or five stops in a row is normal for a trend robot. Choose a risk level you can sit through calmly: 0.5–2%.
- The swaps on buys depend on the interest rate differential between the United States and Japan. If that gap narrows, this bonus disappears too.
Where to run the robot
The robot works in MetaTrader 5 with any broker that offers USDJPY. My test was done at FxPro. The other brokers in my ranking also work: RoboForex and Tickmill. Before putting it on your account, run it in your broker’s tester: it takes an afternoon and shows you how it behaves with your quotes and your swaps. To have it run without interruptions, leave the platform on a VPS: the robot needs to see the close of every H4 candle.
Download the Supertrend robot for free
The robot is free for clients of the brokers in my ranking:
- Open a MetaTrader 5 account with one of the brokers above (or use the one you already have).
- Go to the Telegram bot with the button and send your account number.
- After verification, the bot sends you the file: the robot, the parameters for USDJPY H4, the standard Supertrend parameters 10 and 3 for your own experiments, and the instructions.
📊 Download the free robot on Telegram
My conclusion
Supertrend on its own is not a holy grail: in its standard form it goes years without making progress and loses in most markets. But it’s an honest indicator: it doesn’t repaint and it always shows you where your stop is. If you give it the right market, the right timeframe, and you don’t argue with the main movement, it works calmly and steadily: +40% in six years with a drawdown under 5% and a solid forward test. It’s a robot for one specific market, USDJPY H4, and that’s exactly why I trust it more than “universal” systems. Protect your deposit: start on demo and with a small risk.
Today I also published the analysis of pivot trading: there, the bounce off the level didn’t pass the check, and I explain what to use instead. On the same USDJPY, Williams’ volatility breakout and Elder’s Triple Screen also passed the test. Other analyses: Keltner channel, Ichimoku and the golden cross.
Why 72 months?
The market changes fundamentally every 3–5 years: the participants and the volatility change, and trends give way to ranges. You can see it very clearly in Supertrend itself. Until the fall of 2024, the daily USDJPY line was green for years and fed anyone who was buying. Then the yen entered wide swings, and the daily Supertrend earned nothing in two years, while the H4 robot, tuned to the new market, kept winning. A 10–20 year test would have blended those markets into a single average figure, and you wouldn’t know that a strategy that put food on the table in the last cycle is now stalled. You have to choose a strategy for the current market, and change it when the market changes.
That’s why I built my app “Find your strategy”, in the browser or on Telegram. There you can test any idea on a history of up to 72 months, and every 2 weeks the app runs tens of thousands of strategies on its own and shows you the ones that work over the last 6, 12 and 36 months. It doesn’t promise profits: it helps you see which ideas are still alive in the market that exists today.
Backtest results on historical data do not guarantee future results.
Sources
- Olivier Seban: Supertrend indicator, standard parameters ATR 10 and multiplier 3.
- Own tests in MetaTrader 5 on the FxPro demo server, October 2026.
Where to trade
These are the brokers and exchanges I use that work with clients from Latin America. Always check that the service is available in your country and start small.
Risk warning: CFDs, Forex and crypto derivatives carry a high risk of losing money due to leverage. This article is not investment advice.
