ICT 2022 Mentorship Key Points

Notes by @TanjaTrades on Twitter and Youtube

Technicals:
• Anytime a significant price move lower is expected, always anticipate some measure of a stop
hunt on buys stops or short term high being taken out
And vice versa:
• Anytime a significant price move higher is expected always anticipate a stop hunt on sell stops
or short term low taken out before you see a very pronounced move higher. Go through your
charts and notice it occurs almost on a daily basis.

• When you journal, note how long it took for:

o From market structure shift for price to retrace into the FVG
o From entry to the target
o How much drawdown would you have weathered

• Don’t look for random FVGs – must run above a single high or multiple highs
• During Bearish Market structure shift – must rally above old highs, then quickly shift lower –
quick displacement. We want it to be significant.
• Always mark 8:30ET (Why? News usually comes out that that time) and look to the left – first
swing high to the left of 8:30 - mark horizontal line there for BSL)

Trade Management
• Better to take part of your position off and hold onto your same stops. Otherwise, if you trail
you will get stopped out early
• Close partial of your position inside internal range liquidity (Ex: at previous FVG or at 50% fib
level), then close entire position at external range liquidity (below intraday lows)
• Overwhelming uncertainty eats at you even when you are in profit and makes you panic-
sell/close out early. Remember that those candles retracing can be filling imbalances so that
smart money can accumulate more of their position.
• You must submit to your ideas and watch them come to fruition (takes months of experience)
• If you see a longer-term price swing set up (on the hourly for example) you should try to hold it
out for the move.
• Once price fills an FVG, an intermediate low (ITL) is created and should not be taken out. Once it
starts rallying it shouldn’t come back below the ITL.
o So, for trailing stop losses, you must set it below the previous down-closed candle/
bullish order block’s low. If you don’t you may get stopped out early with small gain and
you will be scared to get back in.
 • The bottom of an FVG can be taken out during morning volatility, wait for it to re-enter FVG for
your entry if you are bullish (Live action example in Episode 15)
• You want to “fluff up” your exit aka pad up your limit sell by a few ticks before the exact level.
o Be more forgiving and incorporate the spread
• If price action meaningfully bounces from a FVG twice, should not come back to it and fill it
completely a third time. The market should not come back into a FVG a third time – it probably
won’t hold up that time
• He doesn’t take no more than 2 trades in the morning and 2 trades in the afternoon
o Opening typically proves 2-3 setups. Right at open is tricky and most volatile, can get
caught up on the wrong side. He prefers that we first look at the initial move to qualify
what we are expecting
• Gold standard: FVG + OB and optimal trade entry after a short-term shift in market structure
• Close proximity entry – if you miss your entry – you can get in near to it or at the next BOS and
FVG as long as it is still good R:R

Bias and Narrative

• Keep your perspective limited to a 5 day time horizon, don’t try to predict more than a week in
advance
• Once consolidation happens on daily chart, makes it hard to form bias
o Look at smaller time frames and look for liquidity pools.
o Be a lot more nimble, take your money and run, don’t try to overstay your welcome
• You use SMT divergence to confirm your idea that was already established. By itself, SMT
divergence doesn’t mean anything… he blew accounts just looking for divergences. You need to
have a narrative as to why this would form.
• Don’t chase, wait
• If we are trading near bearish FVG on daily and there’s a bearish shift in market structure -
gives you bias it will be a big down close day
• Energetic candles is how you know you have a shift in market structure
• All minor lower time frame swings will be subordinate to daily candle structure
o Internalize rebalances as intermediate term highs (ITH) / intermediate lows (ITL)
▪ If you have a bearish bias you must anticipate those intermediate highs as
failures (bearish order blocks)
• If the move has been bearish, up-closed candles should not be breached or broken through.
They will act as resistance.
• When you see an imbalance get rebalanced, the high that forms during that should not be
violated if you are bearish.

• If you can very easily communicate a bullish stance and really hard stretch to sell it for a bearish
stance, that’s high probability.
o If you think it can go either way and you enter a trade anyway, you will regret it later.
Easy to blow accounts doing this.
• FOMC day you can trade in the morning but you gotta be done early
If on the daily, a swing high takes out a previous high and then the next day’s high is
lower, then the day after that he is looking to go short. See images below
• Always extend the opening of the order block candles as the level you’re looking at.
• He uses fib retracements on the bodies of the candles of the swing high and low, not including
the wicks. (he calls the wicks and tails distractions)
• Best to combine multiple ideas for confirmation – Bearish example: daily likely to go lower,
presence of bearish daily order block, multiple equal lows = liquidity below, and fib level
confluence
• Mark out the opening price of the candle at midnight
• 15 min time frame gives the framework
• Fridays have the possibility of retracing back into weekly retracement (TGIF)
o Example: after bearish target is hit: look for short covering and mark out where the
buyside liquidity is
• Think about “where’s the money, who is the easiest prey right now”- that’s where the market
will run for.
• Always start your bias analysis on the daily chart
• It’s important to know what you’re looking for ahead of time, so you’re not changing gears
back and forth intraday, chasing impulsive price swings
• Stick to your bias and only wait for those types of setups (long only or short only) unless you are
proven absolutely that you are wrong.
• There’s lots of liquidity around previous day’s highs and lows and high frequency trading
algorithms attack those areas as well.
• After a swing high/ buyside liquidity is hit, is there a displacement to the downside? Does it
create imbalance? Is there a FVG? -> bearish setup
• Whenever there’s a large imbalance he puts his stop at the top of that imbalance, not the candle
before it.
• Think of orderblocks as ‘bookmarks’ for algos. They want to come back to that spot later on
(when they fill imbalances/ FVGs – provide entries for us)
• If you are going with a short-term trend, against a long-term trend on a higher time frame, he
claims that you will blow your account as a new student
• You must wait for price to come back to fill FVGs, have the patience, don’t chase large
displacements
• If you can’t reasonably outline whether we are going higher or lower that day, you are gambling

• Purge and Revert

o When price action purges sell stops and then reverts back into the high of the last 3
daily candles
o He has a separate video on this

• For trading NY Open:

o Mark out the midnight open price and the 8:30 ET opening price, look for judas swing +
FVG + orderblock = great entry
• If we didn’t rally above opening price at midnight, or the opening price at 8:30 ET, and we’re
bearish = we’re extremely bearish. (Episode 21)
 o It’s useful because you have more insight on what its doing- its too heavy and unlikely to
rally, no reason to go long, look for reasons to go short, and every time you get an
imbalance and we are still above the relative equal lows on the daily chart- look to go
short- as market is going to look to draw into that. Price is gravitating towards that area
now, we just don’t know how long its going to take to get there. He didn’t like how fast
we’re getting there as its not creating many opportunities and it isn’t scalable with his
current YouTube model. (Episode 21)
o Sometimes the market does not give us what we want or expect and trading these
markets is very difficult. Give yourself permission to be human! You’ll miss moves.

• Where do setups form? (Bearish example)

o Sweeps above old highs and displaces lower, creates FVG to short into
o Or goes into a previous bearish FVG and displaces lower, creates another FVG to short
into
o If this structure doesn’t happen, you don’t enter the trade. And you have to be okay
missing big moves.
• Anytime the market trades above an old high, that is a short-term premium because its going
into liquidity. Anytime it trades into an old low, it’s a discount
o Things can be at a premium and go higher and be at a discount and go lower
o That’s why you have to understand the narrative within market structure… aka why you
think market is heading higher or lower
o Narrative is based on climate, economic calendar events, and volatility on that day

• Bias – when the market is moved from a low and creates a swing low, its easy to assume it might
want to come back to the most recent short term high.

• Narrative – the understanding of what price should do, why, and what things will it encounter
to prove that the narrative you are assuming is in place is in fact underway.
o Ex: Price respected a daily fair value gap and ran higher, taking out a short term high –
setting up the afternoon trend/ move higher.

• If we are in an obvious uptrend then that’s an easy setup – but if we are inside a range on the
daily- you have to know what you are doing play within the ranges – don’t try to be a hero
holding for a further break out

• ICT teaches that if we are bullish, we want to be buying at or close to the opening price at
midnight.
o Advanced strategy- if you know the market is likely to go down to go up- you can buy
during the manipulation
Trading Lunch & Trading the Afternoon Session
• When can you trade during lunchtime? – during a sell stop raid during a retracement during
lunch (rather than a consolidation)
o When the market is trading fast/furiously
▪ Back in the day, on days when the market was fast, floor traders would often
skip lunch and stay on the floor
• Rules for afternoon session trade:
o Consider this: what is the daily range trying to do? Expand higher, lower, did it reverse
during the morning session, and is going to have a counter trend move? Or is it going to
consolidate because of a news event the following day?
• 12-1pm is New York Lunch
o The market will typically clear stops during lunch hour.
• Prefers to see a stop run in lunch hour
• Likes to wait until 1:30 for cleaner price action
• If you are waiting to go long in the afternoon – after a consolidation move- wait until you’re at a
discount to do so and in a previous FVG or break of structure with FVG after it.
o If you’re bullish – find the lunch consolidation lows- wait for the break of them to get in
long.

Psychology:
• Embrace imperfection. Let go of the idea of being right every time.
• You will rarely catch the top and bottom perfectly…. No one trades perfectly. EMBRACE THE
GRAY AREA in the market.
• Sometimes this method will end in a loss. That’s what your stop is for… don’t think that you will
be right every time. Don’t let that deter you from continuing the strategy.
• We are trading to make money, not to be perfect, not to impress others
• You’ll have to learn to trust setups and let stops do their jobs
▪ If you get stopped out, that’s just one losing trade-- it’s not your whole career.
• While the market is moving in your favor, continue to trust that move and hold onto your trade.
• If you miss a trade today, there will be another one tomorrow. Do not overtrade and lose
control, that is how you blow accounts.
• Don’t expect to be that precise at first.
• If you don’t aim for a target, you will hit nothing 100% of the time
• Have daily goals/ targets. Shoot for low hanging fruit.
• You don’t need perfect entries-- you can be very average on your entries. You just need sound
money management.
• Focus on the points, not the money
• "Being consistently profitable is a lot better than clout on the internet"
• You’re going to miss moves and misinterpret things-- that’s normal. That’s why you have a stop
loss, and you also must have a measure of flexibility, which will come in time.
• You have control over the mental impact of your losses, you must condition yourself that when
setbacks happen, you say that you’ve been there before, and you got through it. You can’t let it
completely derail you.
• You need patience to get into a setup and once you get into the trade to let it pan out
• People have different trading personalities – whether they are trying to get only a piece of the
pie or whether they are trying to catch the whole daily range is part of their personality and thus
will affect trading style.
• Retail traders have trouble picking the right levels. If the framework is still valid but you didn’t
have the right entry, try a smaller leverage next time.
• Drawdown must be managed. If you have a loss, reduce your risk in your next trade by taking
smaller size. You are going to want to overleverage and revenge trade- that is a gambler’s
mentality.
• You don’t need to make up your loss back right away. Have a long-term view. The last few
trades do not define you. One single trade is NOT a make it or break it. Your career is not going
to be 10 trades and you made it.
• Longevity + controlled risk + impeccable risk management = consistent profitability.
• You will be in periods where it is very difficult. That is just part of being a trader. It just means
you have to take a monetary pause and that is just a tax on success.