Last updated: 8 October 2026. Every screenshot below was recorded on 8 October 2026 on an IQ Option Practice account registered in Brazil, on EUR/USD 5-minute candles; the Chart analysis picture in Step 1 was recorded on 5 October 2026. We placed no real-money trade. The settings come from the platform’s dialog and the calculation from the published source code of the platform’s built-in indicators (Quadcode’s script library). The tested box shows what the trend-change rule, the red line crossing the green one, did on EUR/USD candles recorded between 29 September and 5 October 2026; it says nothing about what will happen next.
The Chande Kroll Stop draws two lines over the price chart that are meant to be protective stops: a red Stop Short line and a green Stop Long line. Each starts from the highest or lowest price of the last 10 candles, moves away from it by one average true range (ATR), and is then pushed to the extreme of the last 9 of those values, so it trails the price and holds its level when the price turns against it. On a CFD (margin) trade, which can have a stop loss, you place the stop by hand at the line; a binary option has no stop. On the candles we recorded, the red line was above the green one on 90% of the candles, so a cross of the two lines is rare, 44 times in 1,300 candles.
Quick answer
- What it plots: two lines over the price chart: Stop Short (red) and Stop Long (green).
- Formula: Stop Short = highest of (highest high of P candles − X × ATR(P)) over the last Q candles; Stop Long = lowest of (lowest high of P candles + X × ATR(P)) over the last Q candles. Defaults P = 10, X = 1, Q = 9.
- Settings on the platform: three, labelled P (10), X (1) and Q (9).
- As stops: long trades are closed when the price falls below the green line and short trades when it rises above the red line. You move the stop yourself; the platform does not.
- Where: the Other list of the Chart analysis panel; search for Chande Kroll.
- Tested: the red line crossing the green one gave 44 signals on EUR/USD 5-minute candles of 29 September to 5 October 2026: 18 won and 25 lost at a five-minute expiry (41.9% of the 43 decided trades), 27 of 44 at a fifteen-minute expiry (61.4%); break-even is 54.1% at an 85% payout. A short replay, no promise.
How do you add the Chande Kroll Stop on IQ Option?
Set the chart
Choose the asset, the chart type and the candle size first: the indicator is calculated from the candles on the chart. The examples in this guide use 5-minute candles on EUR/USD. These steps use the web traderoom on a Practice balance, and the numbers in each screenshot match the numbers in the text. If you do not have an account yet, see how to register.
Step 1: Open Chart analysis
Click the indicators button (1), the wave icon in the chart toolbar at the bottom left of the chart. The Chart analysis panel opens with the tabs Indicators, Templates, Widgets and Scripts. Stay on Indicators.
Step 2: Find Chande Kroll Stop
Type “Chande Kroll” in the Search for indicators box (1), or open the Other list, and click Chande Kroll Stop (2).
Step 3: Check the settings
The dialog has three tabs: Basic settings (1), Colors and display and Script. The P (2) opens at 10, the number of candles of the range and of the ATR. The X (3) opens at 1, the multiplier of the ATR. The Q (4) opens at 9, the number of candles over which the first stops are held at their extreme.
Step 4: Check the colours and click Apply
Open the Colors and display tab (1). The tab has two rows, Stop Short and Stop Long (both in box 2). Each has a checkbox that shows or hides the line, a colour box, red for the short stop and green for the long stop by default, and a line-style box. Click Apply (3).
Step 5: Read the lines
The two stop lines are drawn over the price chart: the red Stop Short line (1) and the green Stop Long line (2). They step down while the price falls and up while it rises, and they stay flat when the price turns. In the picture they meet around 07:40 and again around 07:50.
How is the Chande Kroll Stop calculated?
The Quadcode source works in two steps, with three numbers: P, the number of candles for the range and for the ATR; X, the multiplier of the ATR; and Q, the number of candles over which the first stops are taken to their extreme.
- First stops: the first high stop is the highest high of the last P candles minus X times the ATR of those candles (the ATR is a Wilder average of the true range); the first low stop is the lowest high of the last P candles plus X times the ATR. The source takes the lowest of the highs, not of the lows.
- Final stops: Stop Short (red) is the highest first high stop of the last Q candles, and Stop Long (green) is the lowest first low stop of the last Q candles.
| Part | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| P | 10 | Candles in the range and in the ATR |
| X | 1 | How many ATRs the stop sits from the extreme |
| Q | 9 | Candles over which the first stops are held at their extreme |
Because each stop is the extreme of several recent values, it follows the price when the price moves one way and stays level when it turns back. The short stop follows the price down and stops when the price goes up, and the long stop follows the price up and stays when the price falls. The three numbers are the ATR period, the Stop period and the Multiplier; the platform’s dialog calls them P, X and Q.
How do you read the two lines?
There are two uses. As stops: close a long trade when the price falls beneath the green line, and close a short trade when it rises over the red line; the lines show where to move a stop, and the stop itself has to be adjusted by hand. As a trend filter: when the red line crosses above the green one an uptrend begins to form, and when it crosses below a downtrend follows.
What the lines look like in practice is different. With X = 1, the red line is above the green one as long as the range of the last 10 highs is wider than about two ATRs, which is the normal state; a cross needs the range to shrink to about that size. In an uptrend both lines run below the price, in a downtrend both run above it, and the price closing outside both lines marks a clear trend state.
What did it look like on 5-minute candles?
We replayed the library script on EUR/USD 5-minute candles recorded from the Practice traderoom: 1,093 candles from 29 September 2026 (01:55 UTC) to 2 October (20:55 UTC) and 241 from 4 October (21:00 UTC) to 5 October (17:00 UTC). With the defaults both lines have a value from the 18th candle of each stretch, so 1,300 candles in all.
- Red above green: on 1,167 of the 1,300 candles (90%).
- Crosses of the two lines: 44 (42 in the first stretch, 2 in the second), roughly one every 30 candles.
- Price against the lines: the close was below the green line on 756 candles (58%) and above the red line on 294 (23%).
In window A, 29 September from 05:27 to 11:16 on the platform clock, the red line crossed below the green one at 07:40 and back above it at 07:50, both in the Step 5 picture, which shows 07:09 to 09:08 (a point is drawn at the close of its candle, so a cross found on the candle that opened at 07:35 sits at the 07:40 mark). The replay finds a third cross, below, on the candle that opened at 11:15, which closes after the window ends. A Lower option opened at the close of the 07:35 candle (1.13411) and expiring five minutes later ended at 1.134245: it lost. The Higher option opened at the close of the 07:45 candle (entry 1.134495, exit 1.13467) won, and the Lower option opened at the close of the 11:15 candle (entry 1.134035, exit 1.13429) lost. The crosses came when the 10-candle range of highs narrowed to about the size of two ATRs, while the price moved only a few pips.
The red-crosses-green rule, tested
We wrote the trend-change reading as a rule on closed candles: Higher on the candle where the red line crosses above the green one, Lower on the candle where it crosses below, with the option opened at the close of that candle. No expiry is given, so the box shows five minutes, fifteen minutes and, on 1-minute candles, five minutes.
Tested on IQ Option: the red-crosses-green rule, EUR/USD candles of 29 September to 5 October 2026
| Asset and candles | EUR/USD binary (regular, not OTC): 1,334 five-minute candles (2026-09-29 01:55 to 2026-10-02 20:55 UTC and 2026-10-04 21:00 to 2026-10-05 17:00 UTC); 1,505 one-minute candles (2026-10-02 18:23 to 2026-10-02 20:59 UTC and 2026-10-04 21:01 to 2026-10-05 19:28 UTC). The candles were recorded from IQ Option’s Practice traderoom. The replay places no orders; it only scores the rule on those closed candles, at an 85% payout. |
|---|---|
| Rule tested | The trend-change reading as a rule on closed candles: Higher on the candle where the red Stop Short line crosses above the green Stop Long line, Lower on the candle where it crosses below, with the default settings P = 10, X = 1, Q = 9. The option opens at the close of the signal candle; expiry one candle, three candles, and, on 1-minute candles, five candles. |
| Signals | Red crosses green, 5-minute, 1 candle: 44 signals (22 Higher, 22 Lower) Red crosses green, 5-minute, 3 candles: 44 signals (22 Higher, 22 Lower) Red crosses green, 1-minute, 5 candles: 45 signals (23 Higher, 22 Lower) |
| Outcomes | Red crosses green, 5-minute, 1 candle: 18 won, 25 lost, 1 tied; 41.9% of the 43 decided trades won; net −$0.22 per $1 staked at 85% (−$0.20 at 91%) Red crosses green, 5-minute, 3 candles: 27 won, 17 lost, 0 tied; 61.4% of the 44 decided trades won; net +$0.14 per $1 staked at 85% (+$0.17 at 91%) Red crosses green, 1-minute, 5 candles: 26 won, 19 lost, 0 tied; 57.8% of the 45 decided trades won; net +$0.07 per $1 staked at 85% (+$0.10 at 91%) |
| Break-even | At an 85% payout a trade needs to win more than 54.1% of its decided trades to break even (1 ÷ 1.85); at 91%, more than 52.4% (1 ÷ 1.91). |
A replay is only a look back at candles recorded on the dates above: it placed no real orders, covers about four and a half days of one pair, and counts overlapping trades as if they were independent. A short test proves nothing about the future, and no profit and no win rate is promised here. IQ Option’s own blog on backtesting says that most strategies need dozens, and often hundreds, of trades before a result means anything.
With 44 signals one standard error is about 7 percentage points, and the three expiries disagree with each other, so the replay does not show that the cross carries information. The lines are meant as stops, which the replay does not test.
Pros and Cons of the Chande Kroll Stop
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Two lines that trail the price at a distance set by volatility, so the stop widens when the market is volatile. | The stop is not placed by the platform: you have to move it yourself, and a binary option has no stop at all. |
| The lines hold their level when the price turns, which makes a clear stop level. | A cross of the lines was rare (44 times in 1,300 candles) and did not show a clear edge in our replay. |
| Three settings that change the distance and the speed of the stops. | The source starts the long stop from the lowest high of the last P candles, not the lowest low, so it sits a little higher than a lowest-low version would. |
Common mistakes
- Expecting the platform to move the stop. The lines show where a stop could go; on a CFD trade you set the stop yourself.
- Using it on a binary option as if it had a stop. A binary option has no stop loss and no take profit.
- Reading a cross as a trend change. The red line is above the green one most of the time; a cross comes from a narrow range.
- Changing X without a test. A larger X puts the stops further away and the lines cross even less often.
Related guides
- Parabolic SAR on IQ Option and Keltner Channel on IQ Option
- Fractal Chaos Bands and Donchian Channel
- Money management and what is a CFD
- All indicator guides and all strategy guides
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is the Chande Kroll Stop?
A: An indicator by Chande and Kroll that draws two volatility-based stop lines over the price chart: a red Stop Short line and a green Stop Long line.
Q: What settings does the Chande Kroll Stop have on IQ Option?
A: Three: P (10), X (1) and Q (9). The colour, the line style and the visibility of each line are on the Colors and display tab.
Q: How do I use it as a stop loss?
A: On a CFD trade, place the stop at the line: the green line for a long trade and the red line for a short trade. The lines move with the price, but the platform does not move your stop; you do. A binary option has no stop loss.
Q: What does a cross of the two lines mean?
A: The red line crossing above the green one is read as the start of an uptrend and the opposite as the start of a downtrend. In our replay a cross happened 44 times in 1,300 candles, and its results are in the tested box.
Q: Why is the red line usually above the green one?
A: Because the red line starts from the highest high minus one ATR and the green line from the lowest high plus one ATR; the first is above the second whenever the range of the last 10 highs is wider than about two ATRs.
Q: Can I use it on binary options?
A: The platform draws it on any chart, but the lines are stop levels, and a binary option has none. Whether the cross works as a signal is something to test on the Practice balance.
