ICT Mentorship Core Content - Month 1 - Elements Of A Trade Setup

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okay folks welcome to the first teaching tutorial from the ICT monthly mentorship for month of September 2016 this is the first of eight each month you'll get eight individual teaching tutorials that will complement the general theme for the month uh this particular teaching is going to be elements to a trade set up and as you probably noticed uh this month so far we've been focusing primarily on showing the consistency that's able to be delivered to you as a developing Trader

after you've submitted the time and you've done the work with the exercises and the content uh materials that we're going to be presenting to you um when we refer to elements to a trade setup there's really just two primary uh concerns and one is obviously context or framework surrounding the idea in other words what makes the idea uh favorable for a trade it's not just simply well my indicator tells me this or my support and resistance level tells me that there

has to be something that builds a reason to want to do this trade in my material we're going learning four specific principles and we're going to be dealing with them in general terms and then what we do in those conditions what are we specifically pairing up with in terms of the ICT tools the first one is going to be expansion okay uh we're going to talk about expansion and what we look for in that condition we're we're going to be talking about retracements and what tool or concept we used for

retracements reversal and lastly consolidation now each one of these four give a specific framework and a context to the marketplace that you're going to be trading in they can only be one of these four conditions either the Market's going to be expanding running away in other words uh trending a retracement or pullback uh allog together reversal and obviously when the Market's doing nothing it's consolidating but really we all learned in the market maker uh series there's really no such

thing is the market doing nothing in consolidation exactly accumul ating orders now the other characteristic we use for defining elements to a trade setup is using these four criteria for context and framework to specific reference points in institutional order flow the first one is order [Music] blocks the second one is fair value gaps and liquidity voids liquidity pools and stop runs and lastly

equilibrium now understanding these two characteristics together will give you a greater understanding of market efficiency Paradigm how the smart money interprets price and how they influence the general populace or the speculative uninformed money it's going to be a rather Illuminating to uh tutorial actually you're going to be able to look at the marketplace with an expectation of knowing what tool to apply based on what the Market's providing you right now it

only takes a second or two to look at the marketplace determine okay what characteristic are we trading in so that way you can build a context or framework on how you're going to approach the marketplace sometimes you'll have right away an issue where you can say I'm not going to do anything because the Market's consolidating I am going to be waiting the other three conditions are going to be providing you an opportunity to take action relative to the tools that we

couple with those conditions or

context now the interbank price delivery algorithm or what I always refer to as the algo or interbank algo uh is the actual basically artif intelligence uh it's a price engine that um when we receive our price for our currencies it's actually 90% done by electronic um algorithms so it's all computer-based now it used to be open out cry in the pits uh but there's no longer an auction Market it's all Ai and it's based on the principles I've been teaching for about seven years now um

you're not going to learn these things because number one no one's going to believe that it exists uh there is this movement away from human involvement with Market making um it's become much more efficient to be electronically based and these things are programmed by human beings obviously and those intelligence are limited so while that is probably unsettling for some of you that are listening to this thinking well I thought I had a free market I was trading in uh it's actually not it's

highly manipulated especially in the foreign exchange which is what we're primarily dealing with here because of the nature of it being so manipulated manipulated the the fingerprints if you will are easy to see once you understand the operations and the conditions that the market maker uh in Bank price delivery algorithm functions so when the market does what it's doing uh it gives you indications it gives you fingerprints or Clues as to what you should be expecting next and that's

where your anticipatory skills are going to be coming in you're not going to know these things right away the first time watching this video it may go over your head but for some of you that have already went through the prerequisites I believe that are in my free tutorial section on my website if you haven't gone through the sniper series prision trading Concepts and the market maker series yet you're going to need those okay so don't be discouraged if you hear

some terms in here that go over your head because they're all taught in those three tutorial series for free it's a lot of material over there so dig into not only the stuff you're getting in this curriculum with the mentorship but fill in the space when I'm not giving you content with the free tutorials those three tutorials and I'm going to say what they are they are Market maker series Precision Trading cont Concepts and a sniper

series okay the interbank AL go okay obviously uh there's going to be times when the market goes sideways at or in a consolidation or what I refer to as a holding pattern now when this happens the market will be looking to do an expansion okay so all Market start from a consolidation and move into an expansion that means there's an Impulse move or an Impulse price swing uh after that impulse swing okay either it goes back to a consolidation again or it goes to a retracement when the

retracement happens it goes back down into another level of expansion or after the expansion it can go to an reversal pattern after the reversal pattern it'll see another retracement then back to potentially consolidation these four conditions they interchange throughout the ups and downs and Es and flow of the marketplace you're only going to get one of these four conditions now you're probably saying okay well that's a lot I need to know one of these things to make

a trade no you just need to know where it's at right now where it's likely to go where it came from and over the course of the month of September you're going to get a lot of understanding about how to know where the Market's going to go next and that's going to to fill in a lot of the gaps that you've had with teach me directional bias ICT the main thing is is the consolidation begins with everything all the moves that take place in the marketplace start from a measure of

consolidation because that's where the markets are building orders so the market maker keeps Market in a tight range or a defined range until there's enough money on both sides of the uh upper and lower end of the range that's being defined by the consolidation whichever one has the highest amount of money to be absorbed that's the direction it's going to uh move in we don't always know what that is but we wait for the expansion when the expansion occurs that's when we get the

clue as to what the market is most likely going to be doing and then we wait for either retracement or another consolidation or a reversal but we always wait for the first expansion that gives us all the Insight that we need to make a decision now sometimes it may expand so far that we can't do anything with it we have to wait for the retracement or the next consolidation there's nothing wrong with that it's all normal you're not going to catch every move the main thing is is understanding

these four individual uh characteristics to a trade setup because price is delivered by one of these four conditions it can't be any other

way now what is expansion now expansion is when price moves quickly from a level of equilibrium now expansion couples directly with the toll of an order block now what is the or what's the importance of knowing expansion well when price leaves a level quickly this indicates a willingness on the part of the market makers to reveal their intended repricing model now what does that mean well if we're in a consolidation okay or a point of equilibrium if price were to move up quickly

that would give us an indication of looking for a bullish order block we don't want to chase price we're going to wait for price to come back down into the order block where is that going to occur well what do we look for in price the order block that the market makers leave near or at the equilibrium price point so I don't know what you're thinking okay Michael this is already going over my head give me some examples no problem I'm going to show you that right now as you can see here there's a

consolidation and the BL BL shaded area very clear defined consolidation it's got a clear discernable high and low and the equilibrium price point is directly in the middle of the high and the low end of that range you can simply take the Fibonacci tool that you have in all your platforms lay the Fib from the high and the low in the general consolidation find that midpoint and you can check yourself also by looking at how many times the market touches up up against it from below and

from above it going down into how many times it's touching and hanging around that level eventually the market will move outside of the consolidation you can see that impulse move in that tan shaded box it moves away from the equilibrium price point and then all we have to do is go back to the down candle right before that up move that down candle or Black Candle I'm drawing a small little segment off of that's the bullish order block when the price comes back down into that and hits it that's

where we would be buying and then obviously you can see it hits that level and expands to the upside over 100 Pips just by using that simple principle it repeats itself all the time it's in price action all the time and if you study just to the left of the consolidation we have shaded in blue there's actually a consolidation uh in the cell side where the market broke down and came right back to the equilibrium Price Point again and then sold off I'll leave that for your study

now but we're going to move over to the next characteristic of a trade setup

the next one is a retracement now what is a retracement retracement is when price moves back inside the recently created price range now years ago I think it was in 2012 I did a a webinar called trading inside the range and a lot of folks that were following me on uh one of them uh forums that is pretty popular on internet um they went Head Over Heels when they learned this this simple principle of understanding how you can trade inside of a range and it doesn't

even have to break out doesn't have to Trend you can Define the range by a high and a low and trade inside that range and that was the beginning basis point of how I brought a lot of people from that form into the understanding of an order block the order block was introduced in the sniper series tutorial on my website but uh prior to that I just gave indications and clues about what an order block was without actually really referring to or spelling it out for everyone

what's the importance of the retracement well when price returns inside a recent price range this indicates a willingness on the part of the market makers to repic to levels not efficiently traded for fair value when we're thinking retracement the goto is for ICT tools we're looking for liquidity gaps and liquidity voids when we look for price when we see run UPS real quick and run Downs in price in other words real quick Ries up or real quick rallies down in price many times that range that's

created will want to come back in and close that in and I'll give you an example what that looks like

now this is example of a retracement as you can see here the orange shaded area we had a real quick sudden movement away from a price level and that quick sudden movement creates what we call as a liquidity void in other words as the market drops aggressively like that uh there's going to be Pockets where the price wasn't actually delivered on every um oper uh available price level at that in that range it moved too quickly it skipped or it created gaps Well what

we'll do is is we'll wait as a Trader we won't chase price we'll wait and say okay there's going to be either an indication that get long and try to fill in that range or we can wait for the come all way back up to it and fill in the liquidity void once it hits it then it'll probably resume going lower and that's what we're looking for in terms of liquidity void so we've covered three conditions the next one is the reversal the reversal is when price moves the opposite

direction current Direction has taken in so if we are looking for reversals we're directly coupling that with an ICT tool of liquidity pools now what's the importance of it when the price reverses Direction it indicates the market makers have ran level of stops and a significant move should unfold in the New Direction what do we look for in price the liquidity pools just above an old high and just below an old

low okay and we're looking at examples of reversals here every X indicates where stops would be and the market goes just above those levels and rejects and goes the other way or goes just below those levels or there's an X and rejects and goes the other way look how many times there's so many opportunities just on this one chart and it's on a pair I don't really like to trade the US versus the swissy uh this pair is real choppy it tends to have a lot of this type of

price action so it has a characteristic that is very favorable if if you're into type of trading like this Turtles slps and false uh breaks are really really good um in the

swissy and lastly we have consolidation and whenever we're referring to consolidation we're directly relating that to an ICT toll of equilibrium but what is consolidation consolidation is when price moves inside a clear trading range and shows no willingness to move significantly higher or lower now what's the importance when price consolidates it indicates the market makers are allowing orders to build on both sides of the market expect a new expansion near term now what do we

look for in price we're waiting for the impulse move or impulse swing in price away from the equilibrium price level that is found exactly in the halfway point of the consolidation range and I'll show you an example what that looks like here we see here where we've identified a range defined specifically by the bodies of the candles not the Wicks as you can see price moves out in an expansive Manner and then comes right back down to the equilibrium price point and then expands to the outside by

having an understanding of these specific characteristics and elements of trading a setup you'll give yourself framework to First learn how to practice and study price action and eventually work towards understanding consistant setup uh Discovery and by utilizing the time with me on a daily basis will be able to frame these characteristics and pull out specific elements to a trade setup by repetition and by using the daily time with me where we can outline the elements of a trade

setup we'll be able to do all these things in a manner where you'll able to retain it make it yours you'll be able to discover really what type of trade you're going to be because one of these characteristics is going to be your bread and butter condition some of you will trust the equilibrium some of you will trust the order block some of you will look for the void or the liquidity gaps to trade into uh some of you will have one or two of these characteristics and you'll trade within uh those

parameters they'll they'll frame your trades some of you will eventually grow into understanding all of them and be Universal but don't think that you have to have all of them well known and under your belt before you're actually consistent because you can just find one element as we described here if we just find one for you just for you one you can start being consistently profitable in your trading it only takes one setup you need know what context or framework

you're going to trade in couple that with an ICT tool and then wait for those conditions you're not going to get a trade every single day but you can get a couple of them every single week if you look at four major pairs with one condition or criteria you'll find a trade every single day but that's not what you're trying to do right now you're going to grow into that over time but for now just go through your charts and try to look at all the examples that's already happened in the left side

of your chart and outline them individually based on the characteristics and elements that we've identified here in this teaching until next time I wish you good luck and good training [Music]