Elder Impulse System Explained with an Illustrative Bank Nifty Example

What the Elder Impulse System actually does

The Elder Impulse System was created by Dr Alexander Elder and described in his book Come into My Trading Room. It is not a single line you read off a chart. Instead it recolours every candle on your screen using two ideas at once. The first is trend, measured by the slope of a 13 period exponential moving average (EMA). The second is momentum, measured by the slope of the MACD histogram. When you combine the slope of these two, every bar ends up green, red or blue.

The key insight that most beginners miss is that the system is designed to be a censor, not a trigger. Elder's own rule is that a green bar removes your permission to go short, and a red bar removes your permission to go long. A blue bar gives permission for both directions. So the system does not tell you to buy. It tells you when buying is allowed and when it is forbidden. This matters in Indian markets where index moves can be violent, because it stops you from fighting a strong Bank Nifty or Nifty trend just because price looks stretched.

Because it sits on top of your normal candles, you can apply it to a 5 minute Nifty chart for intraday scalps, a daily Reliance chart for swing trades, or a weekly chart for position trades. The colour meaning never changes. What changes is how often the bars flip, which is why the timeframe you pick decides how many signals you see.

Impulse as a censor: what each colour forbids

Elder framed the system as a veto, not a buy or sell signal. Think of it as a bouncer at the door. It does not pick your trade. It only tells you which direction is off the menu on the current bar.

The logic is simple. A green bar means the 13 EMA and the MACD histogram both point up, so price has both trend and momentum behind it. Selling into that is fighting two forces at once. A red bar is the mirror image. Blue means the two disagree, so neither side has full control and the market is in a pause. A veto is useful because many trading losses come from going against the dominant move, and the colour stops you doing that.

So, can you short when the bar is green? Under Elder's rule, no. If you still want to be short, wait for the bar to turn blue or red. This is a discipline rule, and it is easy to log: if you place a trade against the colour, note it as a rule break in your journal.

The exact colour rules, with no hand waving

Each bar is coloured by comparing today's value to yesterday's value for two separate things. The 13 period EMA must be compared bar to bar, and the MACD histogram must be compared bar to bar. The standard MACD histogram is the 12,26,9 MACD line minus its 9 period signal line. Once you know whether each of those two is higher or lower than the previous bar, the colour is fixed.

Notice that green needs both arrows pointing up and red needs both pointing down. Any disagreement gives blue. This is why blue bars are so valuable. A run of green bars that suddenly turns blue is the market telling you the up move still exists but its fuel is running low. You did not get a red bar yet, so the trend has not reversed, but the warning has arrived. Smart traders treat the first blue bar after a strong green run as a signal to tighten stops or book partial profits, not to reverse blindly.

A dated Bank Nifty example (illustrative levels): green to blue to red and back

Numbers and dates here are illustrative levels used to teach the colour transitions, not a tick by tick record, and they are not investment advice. Picture the daily Bank Nifty spot chart through late May and early June 2026, when the index pushed toward the 57,800 zone and then rolled over before basing again above 55,500. Reading the Elder Impulse colours bar by bar makes the whole swing obvious.

Walk through the story the colours tell. The two green bars on 25 and 26 May said the up move was intact, so a swing trader simply held. The blue bar on 27 May was the first crack. Price still printed a marginally higher level, but the MACD histogram shrank, meaning buyers were tiring even as the index nudged up. That blue bar was the cue to book part of the position near 57,700 and pull the stop up tight. The red bar on 28 May confirmed the reversal: both the EMA and the histogram rolled over, so longs were now forbidden and shorts were permitted. Three red bars carried Bank Nifty down to the 55,500 support shelf. The blue bar on 02 June was the mirror image of the earlier warning: the histogram turned up while the EMA still pointed down, telling shorts to cover. The green bar on 03 June then gave fresh permission to buy.

Worked rupee example on a Bank Nifty futures swing

Let us put a trade on the move above using the correct Bank Nifty lot size of 30. Assume a swing trader shorts one lot of Bank Nifty futures on the red bar on 28 May 2026 at 57,250, then covers on the blue warning bar on 02 June at 55,560. All figures are illustrative and ignore intraday slippage.

• Entry: short 1 lot at 57,250. Exit: cover at 55,560. Points captured: 1,690.
• Gross profit: 1,690 points multiplied by 30 quantity equals 50,700 rupees.
• Notional turnover is large because index futures are leveraged, so STT, exchange charges and GST apply to both legs.
• STT on futures is charged on the sell side at 0.05 percent of sell value (since 1 April 2026). Sell value is 57,250 multiplied by 30 equals 17,17,500 rupees, so STT is about 859 rupees.
• Brokerage on a discount broker is typically a flat 20 rupees per executed order, so 40 rupees for entry plus exit.
• NSE futures exchange charges (0.00183 percent each side, about 62 rupees), SEBI fee (10 rupees per crore, about 3 rupees), stamp duty on the buy leg (0.002 percent, about 33 rupees) and 18 percent GST on brokerage, exchange charge and SEBI fee (about 19 rupees) add roughly another 117 rupees on a trade of this size.
• Total costs come to about 1,016 rupees (859 + 40 + 62 + 3 + 33 + 19). Net profit after costs is roughly 50,700 minus 1,016, so close to 49,684 rupees illustrative.

Now the tax point that trips up most Indian retail traders. Profit from futures and options is treated as business income, not capital gains. So this roughly 49,684 rupees is not taxed at the 20 percent short term capital gains rate that applies to delivery equity. It is added to your total business income and taxed at your applicable slab rate. If you are in the 30 percent slab, the tax on this single trade is about 14,905 rupees plus cess. Keep this in mind, because the Elder Impulse System can generate many F&O trades a year, and they all roll up into business income that you must report, ideally with a tax audit if your turnover crosses the SEBI and Income Tax thresholds.

Settings: standard versus faster Indian intraday tuning

The default Elder Impulse System uses a 13 period EMA for trend and a standard 12, 26, 9 MACD for the histogram. These defaults were chosen by Elder for daily charts and they work well on Nifty and Bank Nifty daily and weekly timeframes. You should resist the urge to over optimise. Most traders who lose money with this tool do so by curve fitting settings to last month's chart and then watching them fail next month.

If you do change settings, change one thing at a time and backtest across at least one full bull and one full correction in Indian indices, for example the 2024 run up and the early 2025 pullback. A setting that only looks good during a one way trending phase will hand back its gains the moment Bank Nifty goes sideways inside a 1,000 point range, which it does for weeks at a time.

Adding a 200 EMA trend filter

Some traders add a 200 period EMA as a long-term trend filter. The rule is easy to state: take Impulse longs only when price is above the 200 EMA, and shorts only when it is below. The filter removes many counter-trend flips and keeps you on the side of the big trend.

The trade-off is lag. A 200 EMA turns slowly, so you will miss early reversals and sit out some good moves near the turn. It also does little in a range, where price crosses it back and forth. This is a variant, not part of Elder's original system, so test it on your own past trades before relying on it.

Using the system for entries, exits and trailing stops

Because the system is a censor, the cleanest way to use it is in two timeframes. Pick your trend on the higher timeframe and your timing on the lower one. For example, demand that the daily Bank Nifty bar is green or blue before you take any long on the 15 minute chart, and never short while the daily bar is green. This single rule keeps you on the right side of the dominant move and removes most counter trend mistakes.

• Entry long: a bar turns from red or blue to green, ideally near a support level or after a pullback, with the higher timeframe also green or blue.
• Entry short: a bar turns from green or blue to red, ideally near resistance, with the higher timeframe red or blue.
• Trailing exit: while a position runs, hold through green bars, get alert on the first blue bar, and exit or reverse on the first opposite colour bar.
• Profit taking: book a partial when the strong colour first fades to blue, because blue is the warning that momentum is leaving even if the trend has not flipped.

For option buyers, the colour flips matter even more because of time decay. A green to blue transition on Bank Nifty when you are long a call is often the moment to exit, because once momentum fades, theta keeps eating the premium even if spot drifts up slightly. Waiting for the full red bar can mean giving back a large chunk of an option's gain to decay and falling implied volatility.

Elder Impulse System strategy rules (numbered checklist)

The system alone does not give an entry. Use the checklist below to turn the colours into a repeatable plan. It is a teaching framework, not advice or a promise of results.

1. Pick your trading timeframe, for example the daily chart. Note the colour of the bar on the higher timeframe first.
2. Only look for longs when the higher timeframe bar is green or blue. Only look for shorts when it is red or blue.
3. Wait for a pullback or a price level on your trading timeframe. The colour alone is not the entry; a level is.
4. Enter only when the trading-timeframe bar turns green (for a long) or red (for a short), and that colour is not against the higher timeframe.
5. Place the stop beyond the swing low or swing high that formed the pullback, so the stop sits at a level the market must break to prove you wrong.
6. Hold while the bars stay in your colour. Treat the first blue bar as a warning: tighten the stop or book part of the position.
7. Exit the rest when the bar turns to the opposite colour, or when the stop is hit.
8. Skip the trade when the 13 EMA is flat and the bars flip every day. Costs eat a choppy range.

A confirmed bar close in the new colour does not mean you get the closing price. The next bar may open higher or lower, so work out your risk from the price you can realistically get, not from the close on the chart.

Combining it with RSI, volume and key levels

The Elder Impulse System is strongest as a filter, not as a standalone strategy. Elder himself promoted using it inside his Triple Screen method, where a higher timeframe sets the tide and a lower timeframe times the entry. You can extend it with a couple of confirming tools that work well on NSE instruments.

Avoid stacking five momentum tools that all say the same thing. RSI and the MACD histogram already overlap, so do not treat RSI confirming the histogram as independent proof. The most useful additions are different in nature: a price level for risk, and volume for conviction. These tell you something the colour bars cannot.

Using the Impulse System inside Elder's Triple Screen

Elder built the Impulse System as a companion to his Triple Screen method. Triple Screen looks at the same market through three filters. Each filter answers a different question.

• Screen 1, the tide: a long-term chart sets direction. Elder suggests the long-term timeframe is about five times your trading timeframe. If you trade the daily chart, the weekly chart is the tide. Green or blue on the weekly bar allows longs; red or blue allows shorts.
• Screen 2, the wave: on your trading chart, use an oscillator such as Force Index, Stochastic or RSI to find pullbacks against the tide. In a weekly uptrend you want the daily oscillator to dip, not to chase a stretched price.
• Screen 3, the ripple: the entry trigger. The daily Impulse bar turning green after the dip is a clean trigger for a long, because it says trend and momentum agree again.

Here is a Bank Nifty style walk-through using the same illustrative levels as the example above. The weekly bar is blue or green, so longs are allowed. The daily oscillator dips as price pulls back toward the 55,500 shelf. When the daily bar turns green on 03 June, the trigger fires, and the stop goes just below the shelf. Had the weekly bar been red, that green daily bar would have been ignored, because the tide was against it.

Is it good for intraday? It works as a filter on 5 to 15 minute charts, but flips come far more often, so costs and whipsaws rise. Many traders use the daily Impulse colour as the tide and trade only in that direction on the intraday chart.

Where it fails: whipsaws and sideways markets

The biggest weakness shows up in range bound markets. When Bank Nifty grinds sideways for two weeks inside a band, the 13 EMA goes flat and the MACD histogram oscillates around zero. The bars then flip green, blue, red, blue, green in quick succession. If you trade every flip you will be chopped to pieces by costs alone, even before being wrong on direction. The 27 May blue and the 02 June blue in the example were clean only because they sat inside a genuine trending swing. In a flat market those same colours are mostly noise.

• Filter for trend strength before trusting flips. If the daily 13 EMA is roughly flat, stand aside.
• Demand a logical price level. A green flip in the middle of nowhere has no defined stop, so skip it.
• Respect costs. On Bank Nifty futures each round trip carries STT, brokerage, exchange fees and GST, so over trading every blue bar quietly drains the account.
• Avoid event candles. Around RBI policy, Union Budget or major US data, gaps can paint a colour that reverses the very next bar.

Setting it up on Indian charting platforms

Most platforms used by Indian traders can display the Elder Impulse System or let you build it. On TradingView, the Elder Impulse System is available mainly as community scripts that recolour candles directly (check the script before relying on it). On broker platforms like Zerodha Kite, Upstox and Angel One, you may need to approximate it by plotting a 13 EMA on price plus a 12,26,9 MACD histogram in a sub window, then reading the two slopes together rather than seeing pre coloured candles.

• On TradingView, add an Elder Impulse System community script, then set alerts for a colour change to green or red so you are notified without staring at the screen.
• On broker charts without coloured bars, stack a 13 EMA over price and a standard MACD histogram below, and judge green, red or blue by hand from the two slopes.
• Always confirm the MACD setting is 12, 26, 9, because some platforms default to other values that change every bar colour.
• Backtest on at least one full year of Nifty or Bank Nifty data, covering both a trend and a range, before you trade real money.

TradingView Elder Impulse System settings

Most TradingView versions, including the common community scripts, expose the same few inputs. Match them to Elder's defaults before changing anything.

• EMA length: 13.
• MACD fast length 12, slow length 26, signal length 9. The script colours bars from the histogram, which is the MACD line minus the signal line.
• Colours: green, red and blue are the defaults. Some scripts call blue 'neutral'.
• Bar colouring: turn on the option that recolours the candles, so the colour sits on the price bars.
• Alerts: TradingView lets you set an alert on a colour change inside TradingView. That is a TradingView feature, not part of OneTradeJournal.

Different scripts can treat a bar where the value is unchanged slightly differently, so check a few bars by hand against the 13 EMA and histogram. Once you place trades from the colours, record each one in your journal with the colour at entry, so you can later see whether trades against the colour did worse.

Tax and rules recap for Indian traders

Whatever signals the Elder Impulse System gives, the after tax outcome depends on Indian rules, so keep these straight. Index and stock F&O profits are business income, taxed at your slab rate, not at capital gains rates. If instead you trade delivery equity off these signals, then short term capital gains are taxed at 20 percent and long term gains above 1.25 lakh rupees in a year are taxed at 12.5 percent. STT applies on every trade, futures STT is on the sell side at 0.05 percent (from 1 April 2026) and equity intraday STT is 0.025 percent on the sell side, with delivery STT at 0.1 percent on both sides.

Under the current framework only Nifty on NSE (Tuesday expiry) and Sensex on BSE (Thursday expiry) have weekly expiries; Bank Nifty and FinNifty expire monthly. Contract lot sizes are set by the exchange, currently 65 for Nifty, 30 for Bank Nifty, 60 for FinNifty and 20 for Sensex. These values are revised from time to time, so always confirm the live lot size, STT rate and expiry calendar on the official NSE or BSE source before you place a trade. None of the numbers on this page are a promise of returns. They are teaching examples to show how the colour transitions and the costs work together.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and Further Reading

For authoritative data and further reading on this topic, refer to Zerodha Varsity, Investopedia and NSE India. Always confirm current rules, rates and contract specifications on the official source before you trade.