Field manual
Learn the concepts the chart marks up.
This is the curriculum behind the workstation: ICT and Smart Money Concepts written the way you study them. Some lessons map to supported chart context or research models; others explain evidence that only has meaning inside a larger setup.
01 · 7 concepts
Price delivery
Gaps, blocks and displacement — the footprints one-sided delivery leaves behind.
Fair Value Gap (FVG) — BISI & SIBI
A three-candle gap left by one-sided price delivery. Price is drawn back to rebalance it.
Read →Price deliveryInversion Fair Value Gap (IFVG)
An FVG that price body-closed through flips polarity — old buy gaps become sell zones.
Read →Price deliveryOrder Block (OB) & Mean Threshold
The last opposite-direction candle before a displacement move — a footprint of institutional orders.
Read →Price deliveryBreaker Block
A failed order block after a stop-run: the candles that powered the fake-out flip into support/resistance.
Read →Price deliveryMitigation Block
A failure swing without the sweep: price tried to extend, failed, and broke structure the other way.
Read →Price deliveryDisplacement
A violent, one-sided candle move that leaves gaps behind — the footprint of urgent institutional activity.
Read →Price deliveryContextual Fair Value Gap
An imbalance used as contextual evidence inside a qualified model — never a standalone direction, toggle or trade.
Read →02 · 5 concepts
Liquidity
Where the stops rest, and why price goes there first.
Liquidity Pools — BSL, SSL, Equal Highs & Lows
Stop orders cluster beyond obvious highs and lows — smart money treats them as targets, not barriers.
Read →LiquidityHRLR vs LRLR — Protected vs Targeted Liquidity
Some liquidity is defended (HRLR), some is a clean target price runs to quickly (LRLR).
Read →LiquidityInducement (IDM)
A minor pullback high/low placed in front of the real zone — bait that must be swept before the true entry.
Read →LiquidityLiquidity Sweep / Stop Hunt / Turtle Soup
Price pokes beyond an obvious level, triggers the stops, then snaps back — fuel for the opposite move.
Read →LiquidityInternal vs External Range Liquidity
Price swings like a pendulum between liquidity outside the range and inefficiencies inside it.
Read →03 · 5 concepts
Structure
The swing map: breaks, shifts, and which half of the range you are allowed to trade.
Swing Points & the STH/ITH/LTH Hierarchy
Three-candle pivots are the market’s skeleton — every ICT tool is measured from them.
Read →StructureMarket Structure — BOS vs MSS/CHoCH
BOS continues the trend; MSS/CHoCH is the U-turn signal. The difference decides everything downstream.
Read →StructurePremium / Discount & Equilibrium
Every range has a fair price at its midpoint — buy below it (discount), sell above it (premium).
Read →StructureOptimal Trade Entry (OTE) — the 62-79% Pullback
After an impulsive leg, the highest-probability entry is the deep retracement — sweet spot 70.5%.
Read →StructureChange in the State of Delivery (CSD)
Contextual confirmation that price delivery changed at a known source level — not a standalone model or signal.
Read →04 · 6 concepts
Time
The clock filters everything. Same pattern, wrong hour, no trade.
Kill Zones — When Setups Actually Count
The few windows when institutions are active: Asia 20:00-00:00, London 02:00-05:00, NY AM 08:30-11:00, NY PM 13:30-16:00 (NY time).
Read →TimeSilver Bullet Windows (03-04, 10-11, 14-15 NY)
One specific hour, one specific recipe: sweep, shift, and enter at the first FVG of the window.
Read →TimeMidnight Open & 8:30 Open
The algorithm’s day starts at 00:00 NY — that opening price is the day’s fair reference.
Read →TimeNWOG & NDOG — New Week / New Day Opening Gaps
The small gaps between futures close and reopen act as magnets the algorithm keeps returning to.
Read →TimeIPDA Data Ranges — 20/40/60 Day Lookbacks
The algorithm "sees" the last 20, 40 and 60 trading days — their highs and lows are its reference frame.
Read →TimeWeekly Profiles — the Week’s Repeatable Scripts
Weeks follow templates — most famously the bullish week that puts in its low on Tuesday.
Read →05 · 7 concepts
Models
The repeating scripts sessions and weeks tend to follow.
Power of Three (AMD) — Accumulation, Manipulation, Distribution
Most trending days follow one script: quiet open, fake move to run stops, then the real expansion.
Read →ModelsJudas Swing
The session’s opening betrayal — the first convincing move is often the false one.
Read →ModelsSMT Divergence (Smart Money Technique)
When correlated markets disagree at an extreme — one makes the new high, its partner refuses — the move is suspect.
Read →ModelsMarket Maker Models (MMXM)
The full campaign template: consolidation, engineered legs one way, smart money reversal, mirrored return.
Read →ModelsCOT Report Basics — Following the Hedgers
Weekly CFTC positioning data — commercials at an extreme is a longer-term bias tell.
Read →ModelsQuasimodo (QM) Structure
A head liquidity event, opposing structural break and return to the bound Quasimodo level — a sequence, not a visual silhouette.
Read →ModelsNR7 Compression Range
The narrowest completed range of the latest seven reference candles — compression context for 22N, not a signal by itself.
Read →06 · 2 concepts
Psychology
Risk, journaling, discipline — the part that actually decides the P&L.
Risk Management — Fixed Fractional, 1-2R Thinking
Risk a fixed small fraction per trade, always with a stop, and think in R multiples — not money.
Read →PsychologyJournaling & Review — the Mirror That Reveals Your Patterns
The journal is where the edge is found: evaluate over samples, never single trades.
Read →Playbook
Entry models
Concepts on their own are observations. The playbook stacks them into executable checklists. Legacy models and namespaced Talaria research models have different availability and execution contracts; each page states what the workstation can actually do.
ICT 2022 Model
The flagship sequence: higher-timeframe draw on liquidity → liquidity sweep → market structure shift with displacement → entry on the retrace into the FVG.
Study the model →Model 02Silver Bullet
A time-based model: trade the first clean FVG that forms inside the 10:00–11:00 NY window (or 03:00–04:00 / 14:00–15:00), in the direction of the established bias.
Study the model →Model 03London Judas Swing
Fade the fake move: London opens by raiding the Asian range (the Judas swing), then reverses. Trade the displacement back through the range toward opposing liquidity.
Study the model →Model 04OB Mitigation + Inducement
Order-block entry with the Talaria-style inducement filter: only trust the OB after the minor liquidity (IDM) in front of it has been swept — that sweep is what traps early traders and funds your entry.
Study the model →Model 05SMT Divergence Reversal
When two correlated markets disagree at the highs/lows (one sweeps, the other fails to), smart money is showing its hand. Trade the reversal at a HTF PD array.
Study the model →Model 06Unicorn (Breaker + FVG)
The highest-conviction zone: a breaker block overlapping a fair value gap. The failed OB flips direction and the imbalance gives the algorithmic reason to trade back into it.
Study the model →Model 07PCR — Previous Candle Range
Five-candle model: mark the previous candle’s range, wait for a 3-candle swing to raid one side of it, demand a 4th-candle CLOSE back through the swing (a wick is not confirmation), then use the 5th candle as the retrace-entry window from a PD Array. Direction, liquidity, candle sequence, location, confirmation and risk must all agree.
Study the model →Model 08SIREN — Failed Supply & Demand
Trade the failure, not the zone: when a demand or supply zone breaks decisively, the trapped traders’ stops fuel continuation and the zone inverts — failed demand becomes resistance, failed supply becomes support. Enter on the retest of the failed zone with lower-timeframe confirmation.
Study the model →Model 09SNAKE — Sweep & Return to Open
Power of Three inside a single candle: when the current candle raids the previous candle’s high or low early — inside the first third of its duration — price tends to snap back to the current candle’s OPEN. The open is the statistical target; anything beyond it must be funded by higher-timeframe order flow.
Study the model →Model 10SAC — Sweep & Close
Two-candle reversal model: the signal candle raids the previous candle’s high or low (the sweep), then CLOSES beyond its opposite side (the close). The signal candle’s continuation-side extreme is the Draw on Liquidity — reached before the invalidation roughly 70–75% of the time in the source material — and entry comes on the retracement back into the signal candle’s range, never at the signal close.
Study the model →Model 11WICK — Wick Behind Displacement
A prominent candle wick sitting immediately behind a forceful displacement move marks an area of interest — not an automatic entry. A lower wick behind bullish displacement may act as support on the return; an upper wick behind bearish displacement as resistance. Wait for price to come back, demand confirmation and directional intent at the level, and treat a decisive trade through the wick tip as invalidation — a failed level may invert, but only take the inversion when it agrees with the higher-timeframe direction.
Study the model →Model 12Turtle Soup (refined)
Fade a failed raid of a significant level. Only quality pools qualify — PDH/PDL, weekly extremes, Asian range, equal highs/lows — and only in a ranging market.
Study the model →Model 13Optimal Trade Entry
The classic fib model: impulse leg → retracement into the 62–79% band → entry at the 70.5% sweet spot, stop beyond the origin, targets at the range extreme and extensions.
Study the model →Model 14First Presented FVG (9:30)
Index-futures opening model: the first clean FVG after the 9:30 equities open often sets the tone — trade its first retest in the direction of the opening displacement.
Study the model →Model 15MMXM — Market Maker Model
The map, not the trigger: price cycles through accumulation → expansion → distribution or redistribution → reversal, and the pattern nests fractally — a daily model contains hourly models. Build an external hypothesis first (seasonality, COT positioning, yields, policy), rank the conflicting evidence, wait for PRICE to confirm a Smart Money Reversal, map prior order-flow ranges as draws on liquidity, then execute one component of the move with a tested entry model — WICK, PCR, SNAKE, SIREN or SAC. Nobody needs the whole model; one well-defined piece of it is the trade.
Study the model →Model 16Quasimodo Retest
A deterministic research interpretation of the Quasimodo retest: confirm the head and opposing structural break, bind the QML, then wait for a fresh, profile-qualified return.
Study the model →Model 17Failed Quasimodo
A deterministic research interpretation of failed Quasimodo structure: prove the original QML dependency, confirm acceptance through it, then evaluate a retest from the new side.
Study the model →Model 18ICT 2022 / NR7
A deterministic research interpretation of the ICT 2022 sequence around a causally confirmed NR7 range: compression is context, while sweep, return, displacement and retracement supply the model.
Study the model →Read it. Then inspect eligible chart context.
Open or request access →Owner approval is required before protected chart services unlock. Only supported concepts have workstation controls; contextual FVG and CSD remain evidence inside a parent model.