An ATR-based trailing line that flips between above and below price. While the line holds, the trend's hypothesis is still alive — an indicator made of one visualised expiry date.
SuperTrend is an ATR-based trend-following indicator popularised by the French trader Olivier Seban in the early 2000s. On a chart it appears as a single stepped line that runs either below or above price. Below price means an uptrend; above price means a downtrend — and that visual clarity is the indicator's main appeal.
Philosophically, SuperTrend descends directly from Wilder's Parabolic SAR. Both rely on ATR, both trail behind a trend, and both flip to the opposite side the moment price closes through the line. But where SAR places dots and accelerates through a step factor, SuperTrend simply draws a continuous line offset from the midpoint by a fixed ATR multiple. The construction is simpler, the read is more direct.
That simplicity has earned SuperTrend a large modern following — both among discretionary traders and as a building block in algorithmic systems. Stacking several SuperTrends with different parameter sets has become a common variation.
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