Ichimoku 5-condition long
Ichimoku traders often wait for several signals to line up before buying. This strategy demands five at once on hourly NIFTY futures bars: the lagging line above past price, Tenkan above Kijun, a fresh break above the cloud after a pullback into it, a bullish cloud ahead, and a bullish MACD divergence. Only a brand-new five-out-of-five setup is bought, with a 3.5-to-1 target and a time stop.How it trades
Results
PRE-BUILT · DEFAULTSWhere it made and lost money
With only 8 trades, no condition has enough trades to judge, so the evidence is anecdotal. The three trades held while NIFTY rose more than 1% made ₹46,722 together, while the four held while it moved less than 1% lost ₹38,394, all of them losers. That matches the design: a long-only breakout needs a follow-through rally to reach anything, and when the market goes sideways after the cloud break, the trade drifts back to its Kijun-based stop or the time stop. Treat these as illustrations of how the rules behave, not as patterns.
About this strategy
- Build 60-minute bars of the near-month NIFTY future, joined across sessions and adjusted for the jump at each monthly roll.
- Compute Ichimoku with 9, 26 and 52 bars: Tenkan, Kijun, the two Senkou spans and the cloud displaced 26 bars forward.
- A setup needs all five: the close above the close 26 bars ago; Tenkan above Kijun; a bullish MACD(12,26,9) divergence confirmed within the last 30 bars; a close above the cloud after closing inside or below it within 20 bars; and Senkou A above Senkou B.
- When a bar completes a new five-out-of-five setup (the bar before did not), buy one lot of the future at the next tick. Long only, one trade at a time.
- Stop: the distance to Kijun, but no more than 2 ATR(14) and no less than 1 ATR.
- Target: 3.5 times the stop distance. If neither is hit, exit after 105 hourly bars (about 15 sessions).
- On the monthly futures expiry, close at 15:15 and reopen in the next month; stop and target carry over.
Why traders use it
Each Ichimoku component looks at trend from a different angle: momentum, balance, support and the projected future. Requiring all of them, plus a momentum divergence, aims to buy only the early stage of a new uptrend after a correction, when risk can be set tightly against Kijun. A 3.5-to-1 reward-to-risk ratio means one winner can pay for several losers. Ichimoku is widely followed on Indian charting tools, and this strict checklist is a common way to filter its many signals.
The year in plain words
On NIFTY futures from 1 Oct 2025 to 30 Sep 2026 with default settings, five-out-of-five setups were rare: the strategy logged only 8 trades, two of them monthly-roll segments, and won 3. It made ₹2,087 before costs and ₹578 after ₹20 per order and bid-ask slippage, a profit factor close to 1. The 3.5R target was never reached; four trades hit the stop, two were closed by the 105-bar time stop and two at rolls. October lost ₹15,155 and April ₹12,896, while June and July made ₹11,824 and ₹18,314. With eight trades, the result says very little either way.
What the settings do
Risks
- Setups are so rare that a year produces a handful of trades, and the outcome depends on one or two of them.
- The ambitious 3.5R target was not reached once in this period, so profit relied on time and roll exits.
- Positions are held for days on a full NIFTY futures lot, with overnight gap risk on every night held.
- Many conditions and parameters make it easy to tune the rules to past data.
Who it suits
Patient positional traders who already use Ichimoku and want to see how a strict, multi-condition long performs on NIFTY. It needs futures margin and acceptance that weeks can pass without a signal.
Questions traders ask
What are the five Ichimoku conditions in this strategy?
The lagging span (Chikou) above price from 26 bars ago, Tenkan above Kijun, a break above the cloud after being inside or below it recently, Senkou A above Senkou B so the cloud ahead is bullish, and a bullish MACD divergence. All five must be true together on a new bar.
Is the Ichimoku cloud breakout profitable on NIFTY?
In this backtest on hourly NIFTY futures from 1 Oct 2025 to 30 Sep 2026 it made ₹2,087 before costs and ₹578 after ₹20 per order and bid-ask slippage, from only 8 trades. Statutory charges were excluded. That is too small a sample to judge, and past results do not guarantee future ones.
Why use hourly bars for Ichimoku?
Ichimoku was designed for daily charts, but on NIFTY daily bars the five conditions would line up only once or twice a year. Hourly bars keep the same structure while producing a few more setups. The 105-bar time stop is roughly 15 trading sessions on this timeframe.
How is the stop loss set?
The stop sits at the Kijun line when it is below the entry, but the distance is kept between one and two ATR(14). That keeps the stop from being too tight on calm bars or too loose after a long rally above Kijun.