ICT Concept For FX
ICT Concept For FX
@kratosbtc
W.E.N.T. - Part 1/5 (Discretionary Trader with a highly developed
pattern recognition and feel for the market)
He was born into a working class family, but could be subordinate to anyone, so
he was motivated to make money without working for someone.
Everyone wants to trade for the same reason. They want to become rich quickly,
quit their job and become famous and live easy.
Most people can’t actually trade because it goes against basic human wiring. They
go into trading without a plan and a system.
The mentality of get rich quick is dangerous, it wires your brain to look for
excitement and turns trading into the lottery.
Trading is an incredible opportunity to change your life, but you must approach it in
the correct, long-term thinking mentality and this is what this course is for.
Trading is not a way to impress your family, your girlfriend and your friends. Trading
is a business. How can you go forward as a business owner with a single
employee to make it successful? Submit to adversity, pain and time required to
learn the required skills.
Most of the material out there is a waste of time and teaches you the wrong things.
The only correct teacher is the market.
He still buys all books and courses just to see if there’s anything new that he can
learn from. Believes that it’s all just a regurgitation of previous materials. Tricksters.
Most people are being set-up like sheep to go into the battlefield and get
slaughtered. We are being programmed to lose money.
Demo accounts are a fantasy created for poor habit forming. You go into trading
with more than you should, like $50,000.
You get emotional charges, but for real trading you need less emotion not more.
Trader’s Graveyard
Even Bitcoin makes bigger moves at certain times of the day. NY, London and Asia
For a swing low, he also maps out the highest point of the 3 candles involved in a
swing low.
For a swing high, he maps out the lowest point of those 3 candles also.
The targeting is used with HIGH &* MIDDLE time frame. Smallest timeframe is
used for ENTRY and EXIT.
All trades are based on SUPPORT & RESISTANCE, the most fundamental aspects
of price action and trading as a whole.
The most important and most reliable indicator is PRICE. There is no lag like others
like MACD, Moving Averages, Sochastic, RSI and so on.
The technician needs to be a master of his or her tools, not a slave to them.
Technical indicators should only be used as confirmation of what pice is telling
you, not the other way around. There will be many times when the stochastic
indicator is “overbought”, but the price can keep plunging for a long long time.
Selling just because an indicator says it’s overbought is just plain ignorant.
By understanding support & resistance, we can understand future probable moves
in the market.
Price tells you everything that has happened and is currently happening. It’s all
there to see. It’s instant with no lag. You can easily pick out areas where price has
shown support or resistance, not where you think, but where it actually has.
What does S&R tell us? we can identify areas of supply and demand. Supply is
area where sellers are likely going to overwhelm buyers causing market to go
down. On a chart we call this resistance. Demand is an area on a chart where
buyers are likely going to overwhelm sellers causing the market to go up. On a
chart, we call this support.
Knowing this, it only makes sense to buy at support and sell at resistance.
Markets run into resistance (Supply) because those traders that bought too late
and saw the price go down now want to get out at break even so they sell.
Markets find support (Demand) because those traders that missed the move up
have a second chance to get in so they buy.
Smart money follows the rules of supply and demand, by knowing how they
operate you can ride their coat tails.
Institutional Price Levels (in forex they happen at .20 / .50 / 80 and round numbers, do we
have this in crypto?) Psychologically sensitive price levels
Selling Weekly Highs and Buying Weekly lows places huge reward to risk in your
hands.
Sniper 1/5
Some expectations you should hold for trading:
Still trades based on a concept he learned in 1994, called the “Triple Screen” learned from
Alexander Elder’s book ‘Trading for a Living’.
Sniper 2/5
1. Just because you sat down in front of your computer and started looking at a
chart, doesn’t mean you need to execute a trade. There may be no trade available.
(SELECTIVE)
2. It’s not about the quantity of trades you execute, but the quality. This is the
hallmark of a professional discretionary trader.
3. Follow the whale / elephant, they always leave a trail of their trading activity, you
have to look with the right perception to find it.
IMPORTANT:
In a bearish environment (daily chart poised to move lower) you have a 70%
chance of seeing the high of the week formed by Tuesday’s LONDON OPEN. The
other 30% is either MONDAY or WEDNESDAY.
When there’s a large range candle (daily, 4H / 1H, 15min) do not usually work both
sides of that opening of that candle very much. Let’s elaborate further.
Institutional traders hold up a level to create for orders to enter the market. In
a bearish market environment, they want BUYERS and the smart money act as
SELLERS.
Every session HIGH and LOW are important. London, New York and Asia. Do that
research on the 5 minute candles. These are the levels we pull FIBS from.
The game is certainly RIGGED and washed out those that don’t have the
dedication to learn of HOW its RIGGED. This is what Michael teaches.
He learned purely through observation and had invent the appropriate vocabulary.
Never ever take a trade that’s not longing a support or shorting a resistance,
starting from 1H timeframe and upwards. This will force you to wait.
Homework: Study the DAILY and 4 HOUR CHART for ‘Reaction Levels’ - the important
levels. Take note of the magnitude of Price Action and how Price failed at potential levels
as well. Take a note of the volatility if you had taken the trade according to basic charting
principles. Trend lines, patterns, etc.
Notepad moments:
1. For every quarter, find the Highest High and Lowest Low.
2. Same for monthly highs and lows.
3. Same for weekly highs and lows.
4. Same for daily highs and lows.
5. Whenever you see a SWING HIGH on a DAILY (extremely strong pattern), you must
record the data points. High, Open, Low, Close for all 3 candles involved in the
Swing High.
6. You do NOT look for a trade / pattern unless it is trading at a higher time frame
reaction level (support / resistance). Therefore, the trade has to be based around
higher timeframes.
Essentialy, Michael breaks down the week into separate days to identify the swing highs
and swing lows that occurred and identifies the behaviour of the price during the
killzones. He looks at the 5 minute candles to identify retracement levels using Fibonacci.
This is for day-traders.
Position Traders Use Monthly, Weekly and Daily Candles to trade. They swing larger
positions with no leverage and hold for longer periods.
Swing Traders use smaller timeframes and execute more trades.
Day-Trading / Scalping (1 hour / 15 minute / 5 minute)
Sniper 5
Hidden Optimal Trade Entry
When a price is trading down towards and order block and especially around a
round number, Michael would use that point for fib retracement to find an entry.
This is not taught anywhere else.
For example using institutional levels .20 / .50 / .80
There are Two Primary Range Concepts employed in his Trading style: FULFILLED
& UNFULFILLED ranges.
UNFULFILLED is when price is expected not to trade to the S&R [Hidden OTE]
FULFILLED is when price has traded to and away from S&R [Hidden OTE]
Most traders don’t understand order blocks and during violent moves down, they
would never consider trying to catch a knife.
One of the hardest things for Michael is profit taking, even after 20 years of trading.
Due to human factor, he sometimes wants to overtrade.
Also used to fumble around in the markets until he met Larry Williams. Made all of
the mistakes in the book.
Firstly, you need the MEAT of the move, not the ENTIRE move.
If you don’t have a pre-planned exit before you execute the trade, you will be
swayed by your emotions to make a mistake. You will be plagued when you are
not trading because you will internally arm wrestle yourself. Set take profits before
executing the trade.
FULCRUM bottom is an important pattern. It’s also the fundamental concept to
understand how to take profits.
He uses FIB extension from Swing HIGH to SWING LOW to get an extension for
potential price targets.
ically, we need a trending market, where we look for OTE on the way down or on
the way up, selecting our entry through order blocks and fibs.
Sniper 6
Break in market structure means the trend has reversed direction. Here we find
FULCRUMS to identify targets for our trades. Fib extension 1.27 and 1.6 are the
most accurate, with targets sometimes reaching the 2.0 mark.
Following the elephants and identifying their buying levels, let’s you purchase for
WHOLESALE instead of RETAIL prices.
Michael suggests for newbies to limit their risk to 1%. He has worked his way up
to 3.5% ONLY when everything is lined up. Weekly, Daily, 4 hour, and 15 minutes.
When you experience a streak of losses, you need to cut down your trading size.
This will teach you patience required to succeed in this game.
Your job as a trader is to protect your capital and create safeguards that limit your
downside. Losses are inevitable.
You have to think of yourself as a lion, they eat a large portion of what was taken
down by the lioness. He gets the lion’s share and walks away. Let other traders
chase the entire move and continuously disappoint themselves.
Give yourself enough room for error, you may have a great entry but the price may
continue going against you for a little bit before turning sharply and creating profit.
Leave a margin of error for yourself. It’s liberating.
Sniper 7
Consolidation of price in a tight range is a warning signal that a big move is about
to happen.
The professional is moving towards an area of consistency where they cherry pick
their trades very carefully. It’s satisfying to sit on your hands and wait for market
conditions to develop and provide you a setup you specialise in. You fearlessly
execute the trade and watch it unfold exactly as you predicted.
JUDAS SWING = false move lower before shooting off higher OR false move
higher before shooting off lower. Judas Swing usually taps a liquidity pool (where
tons of stops are), so that whales can get their order filled before the movement
really starts.
Multiple profit strategy = take partial profit at previous high, then move up your
stop just below the new higher low that was formed. This let’s you ride the price
action while minimising your risk just in case market structure breaks.
After 20 years of experience, he can only predict the market moves with 75%
accuracy which is not always.
If you can’t follow rules, you will fail as a trader. It’s that simple.
You have to define it very clearly what you should be doing and have the discipline
to follow it.
Out of SYNC (the bias of HTF is opposite of the trade you are about to execute on
LTF // take off larger portions sooner)
Intermediate Trading
50 - 30 - 10 - 10
60 - 20 - 20 (you want to take profits quicker to eliminate risk)
Short-Term Ratio
60 - 20 - 20
80 - 20
50 - 50
Day-Trading Ratios
80 - 10 - 10
75 - 25
50 - 50
READ YOUR NOTES at least ONCE a day. No need to watch the videos twice, but feed
your brain the right information.
Sniper 8 (Summary and Overview of ALL Sniper series so far. There’s no additional
technical concepts.)
The Market only moves by means of large funds entering and exiting the
market. Price seeks Profit.
We do not attempt to predict price moves, we wait for the smart money to
move price and read the clues they left behind. Like a detective.
Retail traders cannot move the market, unless there’s a massive HYPE wave
where irrationality completely takes over and people FOMO.
Structured Business Trading Model - Moves in repeating fashion at certain
times.
HTF indicate the direction of Smart Money.
Smart Money / Large Funds are NOT scalpers. They REQUIRE and
PRODUCE sustained moves.
Trading in the direction of institutional money makes our equity rise.
Volatility is the telltale sign that someone with a lot of money is moving the
market and it’s time to pay attention to that particular asset class.
Quiet markets are due to quiet fundamentals. They are graveyards waiting
for you to bury yourself. You will end up overtrading.
Price typically moves in overall weekly direction - we take trades in the same
direction of the bias.
Dynamic explosive moves occur from HTF analysis and Time & Price Theory
Entering markets when prices move opposite to your intended trade is
optimal. (aka prices coming down in a bullish bias, going up in bearish bias)
Market Makers generally drive markets higher to sell into the rallies.
Market Makers generally drive markets lower to buy into the drops.
Significant price moves are typically seen AFTER stops are raided.
What analysis and process is used on the Study of the Daily Chart?
Price action seeks ‘yield’ and market will move wherever yield is supplied.
Seasonal tendencies are considered - but they are not guaranteed.
Look at obvious S & R levels. Look at the weekly and daily chart for this.
Do not discount the levels acquired on the Weekly and Monthly charts. You
will handicap if you ignore the HTF.
Determine current market structure. Bullish or Bearish bias? What swing are
we in: Long-Term / Intermediate / Short-Term
Overlaying 9 & 18 EMA for directional bias. I can use something different in
crypto. Guppy? Ichi?
Highlight KEY swing highs and swing lows.
Note the DAILY candle high - low - open - close. These are sensitive price
levels.
Identify major REACTION levels - where a price QUICKLY moves away from
the level.
Highlight potential order blocks where price will react in similar fashion.
ALL LEVELS and ORDER BLOCKS are carried over to the 4 hour, then 1
hour then 15 minute timeframes.
What analysis and process is used on the Study of the 4Hour Chart?
The Daily Analysis is kept on focus. We hold our daily bias to look for trades.
With DAILY ANALYSIS being BULLISH, we look for key support levels to
enter trades on.
With DAILY ANALYSIS being BEARISH, we look for key resistance levels to
enter trades on.
You can see majority of stop orders. So look for for potential areas where
stops could be raided = LIQUIDITY POOL. Another way of asking that is,
WHO IS WINNING RIGHT NOW AND WHERE ARE THEIR STOP ORDERS?
Define 4 hour ORDER FLOW and couple this with MARKET STRUCTURE.
Buying support when DAILY UP.
Define 4 hour ORDER FLOW and couple this with MARKET STRUCUTRE.
Selling resistance when DAILY DOWN.
Look for the reaction levels within the daily directional premise / bias. (where
price sees quick advances or declines)
ORDER BLOCKS can be further refined on this timeframe, getting more
precise figures for areas of institutional interest.
If in DOUBT, the 4 HOUR can be used instead of DAILY to find directional
bias.
All 4 hour analysis is carried over to the 1 hour and lower timeframes.
What analysis and process is used on the Study of the 15Min Chart?
We are looking for areas where price AGRESSIVELY moved away from an area and
then returned to it later.
If you derive the framework of the trade off a weekly chart, you have to manage the
trade off the weekly chart. Not daily or hourly.
We are looking for confluence between orders flow and weekly order blocks.
Retail trading tactics that include patterns, supply and demand are deadly. Forget
you ever learned them.
Here you will learn how to retrain your eye to search for useful formations and
setups that constantly repeat.
First thing you want to look for is, what needs to be done to make whoever is
winning right now - lose?
You need to take a note of EQUAL highs and EQUAL lows. Make a note of them.
Retail trading teaches us to take the wrong trades. Institutional players that
actually move the markets think completely differently. They know that trader’s buy
stops are sitting above equal highs, and they know that trader’s sell stops are
sitting below equal lows. THIS is what they are looking for. They need someone to
take the opposite side of their trade.
Trading when your hand is hot is foolish. You need to have the discipline to
execute trades ONLY when you are given an optimal trade entry by the market.
Forcing a trade is attempting the market to fulfill your dreams. You may get lucky,
but even worse this will teach you the wrong habits for trading.
A low risk entry is price trading back into an order block after penetrating it.
We can identify the TREND with DAILY candles. Draw a horizontal line from both
the HIGH and LOW of the previous day. Now observe if today’s price is penetrating
it upwards or downwards or staying within the established range.
Very rarely do we see both sides of the PREVIOUS DAILY CANDLE traded through.
It usually indicates indecision, or a market reversal.
If we are bullish, we focus on the HIGH of the previous DAILY being taken out.
If we are bearish, we focus on the LOW of the previous DAILY being taken out.
He marks DAILY candles that penetrate the PREVIOUS days HIGH and LOW with a
small X. He calls it the OUTSIDE day, indicates either indecision or reversal.
BULLISH BIAS: If ASIA creates the LOW of the DAY and then starts to RUN UP,
London Open will RETRACE into OTE
BEARISH BIAS: If ASIA creates the HIGH of the DAY and then starts to RUN
DOWN, London Open will RETRACE UP into OTE.
Therefore, London can be a retracement of the move created by the Asian Open.
New York
London Close
MUST STUDY: Look at when the WEEKLY and MONTHLY highs and lows are forming.
They form a story.
A standalone price action pattern focused on trading key turning points in market
direction.
More frequent in Forex than crypto because the market changes direction more
often. (Not sure if true)
Capitalizes on stop runs.
Can be found on the 60 minute chart.
Easy to spot and trade.
He primarily wanted to teach his kids to trade this pattern, and has refined the
teaching process over the years to make it simple.
Look out for compressed WEEKLY and DAILY ranges. This means something is
brewing. During those days traders normally get bored and when they least expect
it, an explosive movement happens. Retail traders attempt chasing the price. You
should anticipate those movements before they happen to trade like an institution.
To overcome FOMO, you have to develop a trading plan. Killzones are important to
understand Time Theory. Next, you have to select a few setups that you want to
look for and execute them. Instead of chasing price, we are waiting for the price to
trade into the levels we have selected.
Even by missing a move, we know that a setup can form on other days of the
week, and definitely next week. Neophyte traders don’t have this luxury because
they are operating from a scarcity mindset.
Fear of Losing
Once again, this comes from a lack of trading plan. If you don’t have a method
that’s seen consistency in hindsight and backtesting, you will not have the
necessary ability to embrace uncertainty.
All of us hit a wall in trading, at which we really have to consider if trading is for
me. For most people, trading is the wrong choice and they are better off moving
on.
If you are trading, you have to fully accept that losses are a part of the job. Trying
to avoid them is absolutely deadly to your trading career.
You may have a well groomed trading strategy and risk management strategy,
but in-between waiting for those setups, you get impatient. Or if you see the
pattern forming, but you can’t stand waiting for the price and you execute the
trade before it runs away.
Another situation is when you have successfully executed a trade, and the rush
you get from winning pushes you to execute another trade. You can only learn how
to overcome impatience with experience.
Byproduct of being on social media. If you can’t handle the amount of ‘expert
Traders’ who show off cash and their winnings calls but never the losers - you will
end up comparing yourself to them and you will ALWAYS fall short. If you are
experiencing this and it’s affecting your trading, you are better off staying off social
media completely.
Whoever is HOT right now is where the crowd will flood. It’s always been this way
and not only in trading.
Your goal as a trader to be independent in your analysis and your decisions. Keep
the focus on developing your skills rather than trading off other people’s analysis
or calls.
3 Trader Personas
Being a successful trader requires the integration of 3 parts, and channeling them
at the correct time.
The analyst is objective and analyses the market through an objective lens.
The trader looks for opportunity through a prism of REWARD : RISK.
The gamble is impulsive, pushes high leverage and takes big risks. This is the one
you need to watch. The gambler takes both wins and losses very seriously and
either pushes for more trades after winning, or becomes scared to trade after
losing.
You want to bring your focus towards being the analyst and watching the price
action as it develops, watching the key levels and following the trading plan. This is
the one who keeps you on the right path.
The BEST TRADING BOOK out there is the one you are about to write. You can’t
teach your experience to someone else. You can talk about it, but it won’t have the
same impact. JOURNAL is a winning trader’s secret.
Take a SCREENSHOT before you execute a trade and ANTICIPATE what you think
is going to happen.
How you felt going into the Trading Day. You MUST develop the DISCIPLINE to put
off trading if you have significant events in your life that will steal your attention
from trading.
He gives himself the GIFT of ROUTINE.
If you don’t RELEASE your FEELINGS through JOURNALING, those thoughts and
feelings will grow like cancer in your mind and cloud your judgment and affect your
performance.
Record any ANXIETY / FEARS you had when watching PRICE ACTION. This is a
BEAUTIFUL opportunity to learn more about yourself. Screenshot the price action
and make a note of what you’re feeling.
Any ELITE PROFESSIONAL in any INDUSTRY, records what they have done, when
and how they felt about it. You don’t want to have to rely on your memory.
Detail where you felt UNCERTAINTY and how you COPED. He plays with deck of
cards, fidget spinners and coins. You have to SUBMIT to the trade. Either it works
out or it doesn’t.
What are you happy with? Use POSITIVE words for the things you did well on.
Avoid NEGATIVELY charged words when you struggle. Otherwise your
SUBCONCIOUS will filter that as a source of stress. Next time you look at a
charge, your perception won’t be able to pick up on that element and you will
completely miss out.
Weekly LOG.
BULLISH BEARISH
OPEN & LOW: Accumulation of LONGS. OPEN & HIGH: Accumulation of SHORTS
MANIPULATION: price goes opposite of inte MANIPULATION: price goes opposite of in
nded direction. (goes down to tap into liquidi direction. (going up to tap into liquidity)
ty) RANGE EXPANSION downwards.
RANGE EXPANSION upwards. LOW & CLOSE: Distribution
HIGH & CLOSE: Distribution
Confirm LONDON session was bullish. Confirm LONDON session was bearish.
Wait for New York (Sydney 9-11PM) to RETR Wait for New York (Sydney 9-11PM) to RE
ACE stalk a LONG. up and stalk your SHORT.
Wait to enter on the 62% Fib from Session L New York usually retraces from SWL (crea
OW to HIGH ondon)
Expect price to retest HIGH of the DAY and t If no retracement - walk.
hen Fib Extensions. If it does - enter on the 62% fib.
Expect price to retest LOW of the DAY or
US Day LOW. (then Fib Extensions)