Calculate the Supertrend indicator for a given price series.

The Supertrend indicator plots a single trailing line that flips between sitting below price (in an uptrend) and above price (in a downtrend). The line is built from two bands offset from the median price ((High + Low) / 2) by a multiple of the Average True Range, which are then “ratcheted” period over period - each band can only move in the direction that tightens around price - so that the active band only flips to the other side once the closing price actually crosses it. This makes Supertrend both a trend filter (the flip direction signals a trend change) and a trailing stop-loss level.

The formula is as follows:

\[\text{Basic Upper Band} = (\text{High} + \text{Low}) / 2 + \text{multiplier} \cdot \operatorname{ATR}(\text{window})\] \[\text{Basic Lower Band} = (\text{High} + \text{Low}) / 2 - \text{multiplier} \cdot \operatorname{ATR}(\text{window})\] \[\text{Final Upper Band} (t) = \text{Basic Upper Band} (t) \text{if Basic Upper Band} (t) < \text{Final Upper Band} (t-1) \text{or Close} (t-1) > \text{Final Upper Band} (t-1),\;\; \text{else Final Upper Band(t-1)}\] \[\text{Final Lower Band} (t) = \text{Basic Lower Band} (t) \text{if Basic Lower Band} (t) > \text{Final Lower Band} (t-1) \text{or Close} (t-1) < \text{Final Lower Band} (t-1),\;\; \text{else Final Lower Band(t-1)}\] \[\text{While in an uptrend},\;\; \text{Supertrend} = \text{Final Lower Band},\;\; \text{until Close crosses below it},\;\; \text{at which point the trend flips to} a \text{downtrend and Supertrend} = \text{Final Upper Band} (\text{and vice versa})\]

Also known as: Supertrend, SuperTrend.

No programming experience? With the Finance Toolkit MCP server, AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT can calculate the Supertrend for you. Just ask in plain English.

Calculate the Supertrend in Python

The Supertrend is available in the Technicals module of the open-source Finance Toolkit. Install it with:

pip install financetoolkit -U

Then call get_supertrend as shown below.

from financetoolkit import Toolkit

toolkit = Toolkit(tickers=["AAPL", "MSFT"])

toolkit.technicals.get_supertrend().xs("AAPL", level=1, axis="columns")

Parameters

get_supertrend accepts the following parameters:

  • period (str, optional): The time period to consider for historical data. Can be “daily”, “weekly”, “quarterly”, or “yearly”. Defaults to “daily”.
  • close_column (str, optional): The column name for closing prices in the historical data. Defaults to “Adj Close”.
  • window (int, optional): Number of periods for the underlying Average True Range calculation. Defaults to 10.
  • multiplier (float, optional): Multiplier applied to the Average True Range to determine how far the bands sit from the median price. Defaults to 3.0.
  • rounding (int | None, optional): The number of decimals to round the results to. Defaults to 4.
  • growth (bool, optional): Whether to calculate the growth of the Supertrend and Trend Direction values. Defaults to False.
  • lag (int | list[int], optional): The lag to use for the growth calculation.
  • standardize (bool, optional): Whether to standardize (Z-Score) the result. When combined with growth=True, standardizes the growth values instead of the raw values. Defaults to False. Defaults to 1.
True Range (TR) Average True Range (ATR) Keltners Channels Bollinger Bands Donchian Channels Volatility Cone

The Technicals module page introduces the module, and the sidebar lists all of its functions.

Share