Index and stock futures · NSE
Buy and sell signals for index and stock futures, with a stop-loss you can size against
A futures position is the instrument itself with borrowed size. One Nifty or stock futures lot controls a contract value many times the margin you post, so a 1 percent move in the underlying is a far larger percentage of your capital. Futures have no time decay and move almost point for point with the underlying, which makes chart levels easy to apply.
WizeBuySell is futures buy sell signal software for AmiBroker and TradingView. At candle close it plots a buy or sell with entry, T1, T2, T3 and a stop-loss that trails to entry at T1 and to T1 at T2. Because futures track the underlying so closely, those levels translate directly into orders. The software does not place them; you do, through your own broker.
Leverage makes the stop-loss distance the main number
With a future the loss is open-ended until you exit, and it is multiplied by the lot. So the first thing to read on a futures signal is not the target but the gap between entry and stop-loss. Multiply it by the lot size from the current NSE circular and you have the rupee risk of one lot.
Take an illustrative Nifty futures buy at 25,140 with a stop-loss at 25,066. That is 74 points at risk. If that is too much for your account, skip the trade; do not move the stop-loss closer. Stock futures make this sharper: the lot is fixed, so on some stocks a single lot is already too big for a small account.
Continuous chart or current-month contract
| Chart type | What it is | Good for | Problem |
|---|---|---|---|
| Current-month contract | One contract, from listing to expiry | Exact levels for the contract you are trading | Short history; the chart ends at expiry |
| Continuous, unadjusted | Near-month contracts joined end to end | Long history on one symbol | A price jump at each rollover that never traded |
| Continuous, back-adjusted | Joined with the rollover jump removed | Swing signals on daily charts | Old prices are shifted and no longer match real quotes |
| Spot or underlying | The index or the stock itself | The cleanest trend reading | Levels differ from the future by the basis |
Ask your data vendor whether their continuous series is adjusted.
What a Futures signal looks like
| Symbol | Side | Entry | T1 | T2 | T3 | Stop-loss | TF | Time | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NIFTY FUTIndex Future | buy | 25,140.00 | 25,198.00 | 25,268.00 | 25,352.00 | 25,066.00 | 15m | 10:00 | T2 hit |
| BANKNIFTY FUTIndex Future | sell | 56,385.00 | 56,250.00 | 56,090.00 | 55,900.00 | 56,560.00 | 15m | 09:45 | T3 hit |
| RELIANCE FUTStock Future | buy | 1,408.60 | 1,417.00 | 1,428.00 | 1,442.00 | 1,397.50 | 30m | 11:30 | SL hit |
| SBIN FUTStock Future | sell | 856.20 | 850.50 | 843.50 | 834.50 | 863.40 | 1h | 12:15 | T1 hit |
| HDFCBANK FUTStock Future | buy | 1,918.00 | 1,946.00 | 1,982.00 | 2,028.00 | 1,879.00 | 1D | 15:30 | Active |
Illustrative rows that show the format, including a stop-loss hit. Not a track record. See how each level is calculated.
Rollover week, and the jump that nobody traded
Monthly futures expire, and in the last few days before expiry volume migrates from the current contract to the next one. During that handover the near contract gets thinner, its basis to spot shrinks toward zero, and the next-month contract trades at a different price, sometimes 80 to 150 points away on Nifty at illustrative levels.
On an unadjusted continuous chart that difference appears as a one-candle jump on rollover day. Nobody traded it, but any price-based indicator reads it as a move, and a signal that fires on that candle should be ignored. On the single-contract chart there is no jump, but an open positional signal simply runs out of contract.
The practical approach for swing traders: a few days before expiry, close or roll the position yourself, switch the chart to the next-month contract and let fresh signals form there. Check the current NSE circular for expiry dates. Intraday traders only need to move to the next contract once it has the volume.
Overnight gaps on positional futures
Index futures trade from 9:15 am to 3:30 pm. The world does not. US markets close at night IST, crude moves, the rupee moves, and all of it lands in the opening price. A positional long with a stop-loss 120 points below can open 250 points lower, and the loss is the gap, not the stop-loss.
Stock futures gap harder than index futures, on results, downgrades and news specific to the company. Size daily-chart signals on stock futures on the assumption that, sooner or later, one of them will open well beyond its stop-loss. Mark-to-market is settled daily too, so keep free cash in the account for anything you carry.
Working a futures signal from alert to exit
- 01
Match the chart to the contract
Run the indicator on the same contract month you will trade, so entry, targets and stop-loss need no translation.
- 02
Compute rupee risk first
Points between entry and stop-loss, times lot size, times number of lots. If the figure is above your per-trade limit, pass.
- 03
Place the stop-loss as an order
Futures move too fast for mental stops. Put the order at the signal's level, and accept that a fast market can fill it worse.
- 04
Trail when the software trails
At T1 move your stop order to entry. At T2 move it to T1. The chart shows the new level each time.
Stock futures: check the volume before the signal
Nifty and Bank Nifty futures are liquid all day. Stock futures are not uniform. The largest names trade in volume; lower down the F&O list a contract may print a few trades a minute, with a spread wide enough to take a real bite out of the distance to T1.
On thin contracts the chart itself degrades: holes between candles, wicks from single odd trades. A cleaner method is to read the signal on the stock's cash chart, which is far more liquid, and execute in the future, adjusting levels by the basis.
Honest limits for futures traders
The software marks levels; it does not know your lot size, margin or account. It does not roll contracts, adjust for the basis, or warn you that expiry is two days away.
In sideways markets futures signals whipsaw like any other, and with leveraged size a string of four small stop-losses is a meaningful drawdown. Gaps go through stop-losses. We publish no accuracy percentage, and nothing here is investment advice.
Questions about Futures
Should I apply signals to the futures chart or the spot chart?
If you trade the future, the futures chart is simpler, because every level is already in the price you will transact at. The spot chart gives a cleaner trend and longer history but differs by the basis, which changes daily and shrinks toward expiry. Either is valid; mixing them is not: a spot stop-loss typed into a futures order will be off by the basis.
What happens to an open signal when the contract expires?
On a single-contract chart the data simply stops at expiry, and so does the signal. The software does not carry a position into the next month for you. If you hold positional trades, close or roll them yourself a few days early, load the next-month contract and wait for a new signal there. No chart indicator removes that limitation of expiring instruments.
Can I use daily-chart signals for positional futures trades?
Yes, and swing traders do. Expect wide stop-losses in points, higher overnight margin, daily mark-to-market and the occasional gap beyond the stop-loss. Use a back-adjusted continuous chart or the underlying for the signal so rollover jumps do not create false ones, and keep position size small enough that one bad gap is survivable.
Do the signals work on stock futures with low volume?
They will plot, but we would not rely on them. Illiquid contracts produce broken candles and stray wicks, and any indicator reading that data is reading noise. Read the signal on the cash chart of the same stock and decide separately whether the future is liquid enough to execute in. If the spread is a large fraction of the distance to T1, it is not.
Does WizeBuySell cover MCX and currency futures too?
Yes. The same indicator runs on MCX crude oil, gold, silver and natural gas futures and on NSE currency pairs such as USDINR, as part of the 1,240 symbols covered. Those markets keep different hours and have their own drivers, so they have their own pages.