Ichimoku Settings for the 15-Minute Chart: The Default 9/26/52 Beat 7 Other Sets on EURUSD and Gold, and Fast 6/13/26 Came Last on Gold

Google suggests “ichimoku settings for 15 min chart” to anyone who types Ichimoku, and the answers online split into two camps: keep 9/26/52, or speed it up for intraday charts. I tested both camps on the same bars. The full rule by rule results are in my Ichimoku 15-minute chart test. This page is about the settings, and how to put the winner on your chart.

Which Ichimoku settings did I test?

• 9/26/52: the default in MT4, MT5 and TradingView.
• 7/22/44 and 8/22/44: shortened sets often given for forex intraday charts.
• 6/13/26 and 5/15/30: fast sets sold for scalping.
• 10/30/60: a slightly slower version of the default, used for a six-day trading week.
• 20/60/120 and 12/24/120: slow sets often given for crypto and 24-hour markets.

Each setting ran five rules: cloud breakout, Tenkan/Kijun cross, the cross with price on the right side of the cloud, Kijun cross, and the full strong signal with Chikou read live. Exit: stop 1.5 ATR, target 3 ATR, closed after 48 bars. Data: 5,642 EURUSD M15 bars from June 3 to August 26, 2026, and 4,577 gold M15 bars from June 16. Cost: 1 pip, or $0.30 an ounce. Pairs with fewer than 30 trades are left out.

Which Ichimoku settings worked best on M15?

Median of the five rules, after cost: dollars per ounce on gold, pips on EURUSD. 20/60/120 has four gold rules: its strong signal had only 23 trades.

Three things stand out. The default was first on both markets. The fastest set, 6/13/26, was last on gold and below the default on EURUSD; speeding Ichimoku up to fit a short chart only added signals that did not pay for the spread. And 10/30/60 was the steadiest on gold: 4 of its 5 rules held in both halves, one more than the default, at a lower median.

On EURUSD the table is a ranking of losses. The best single pair was 10/30/60 with the Tenkan/Kijun cross, +0.76 pips a trade on 162 trades and positive in both halves. Picked from 40 pairs, that is the kind of best cell that fades on new data, as my optimized vs default settings test showed. I would not trade Ichimoku on EURUSD M15 with a 1-pip spread at any of these settings.

How do I set up Ichimoku 9/26/52 in MT4?

1. Open a gold chart (XAUUSD or GOLD, depending on your broker) and switch to M15 with the M15 button on the toolbar.
2. Insert, Indicators, Trend, Ichimoku Kinko Hyo.
3. On the Parameters tab: Tenkan-sen 9, Kijun-sen 26, Senkou Span B 52. These are the defaults, so if you have never changed them, leave them.
4. On the Colors tab, give Tenkan and Kijun clearly different colours. The cross between them is the entry, so you need to see it at a glance.
5. Insert, Indicators, Oscillators, Average True Range, period 14. Its value is your stop size: 1.5 times ATR.
6. Right-click the chart, Template, Save Template, and name it “Ichimoku gold M15”.

In MT5 the path is the same: Insert, Indicators, Trend, Ichimoku Kinko Hyo, with the same three inputs. My Ichimoku settings guide for MT4 explains what each line is, and the first MT4 chart setup guide covers templates.

How do I trade the rule that passed on gold M15?

1. Wait for the cross on a closed bar. Buy when Tenkan crosses above Kijun, sell when it crosses below. A cross that appears and disappears inside a forming bar does not count.
2. Check the cloud on the same bar. For a buy, that bar must close above the whole cloud. For a sell, below it. If it closes inside the cloud, skip the signal.
3. Enter at the close. Put the stop 1.5 ATR away and the target 3 ATR away. Example: ATR 8.50 on a buy at 4,600.00 gives a stop at 4,587.25 and a target at 4,625.50.
4. Close after 12 hours (48 bars) if neither is hit.
5. One trade at a time. Ignore new crosses while you are in a trade.
6. Size the trade on the stop. 0.01 lot of gold is 1 ounce, so a 12.75 stop risks $12.75. The position sizing table covers other sizes.

In the test this made +$4.59 an ounce a trade after cost on 79 trades, about 8 a week, and won 46.8% of them. The worst run of losses cost $88.60 an ounce.

What about the Chikou span?

Adding Chikou as a filter, the “strong signal”, made +$3.87 an ounce a trade on gold M15 with the same exit: less than the cloud filter alone, on 58 trades instead of 79. If you use it, read it live: today’s close against the close 26 bars ago. Do not judge it by eye on old candles. It is drawn 26 bars back, and on a history chart it shows where price went next. In my does Ichimoku repaint test that look-ahead lifted the win rate on EURUSD M15 from 37% to 58%.

What are the limits of these settings?

• About 10 weeks of gold. June 16 to August 26, 2026, while gold rose $324 an ounce. A different market phase can change the ranking.
• One test, not a promise. The default ranking first on both markets is a good sign that it is not a lucky pick, but 79 trades are not enough to promise +$4.59 a trade.
• Your spread. On gold I used $0.30 an ounce. On EURUSD the 1-pip spread was the difference between profit and loss for most rules.

Before trading with money, run it on demo or in the MT5 Strategy Tester; my MT5 backtesting guide shows how. And if you trade gold, gold scalping session by session shows how much the hour of day matters.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best Ichimoku settings for the 15-minute chart?

In my test, the default 9/26/52. It had the best median result of 8 settings on both EURUSD and gold M15, and all five rules made money with it on gold after cost.

Should I use faster Ichimoku settings for intraday charts?

Not on this data. The fast 6/13/26 had the worst median on gold M15, and 7/22/44 and 8/22/44 did worse than the default on both markets.

Do the 20/60/120 crypto settings work on forex?

On gold M15 they came second by median, +$1.26 an ounce, but on fewer trades. On EURUSD M15 all five rules lost with them.

Which Ichimoku strategy works on the 15-minute chart?

The Tenkan/Kijun cross taken only when price is on the right side of the cloud, on gold: +$4.59 an ounce a trade after cost, positive in both halves and above random entries. It lost on EURUSD.

Are Ichimoku settings the same in MT4 and MT5?

Yes. Both use Tenkan-sen 9, Kijun-sen 26 and Senkou Span B 52 by default, under Insert, Indicators, Trend, Ichimoku Kinko Hyo.