When I started trading ICT, I heard the same words as everyone else: FVG, turtle soup, market structure. But nobody told me how to put all of it together in practice. Today, I’d like to share what has really helped me—a strategy that anyone can apply, regardless of their experience level.

I always start with the weekly chart. Here, I build my base—I look for the so-called IRL and ERL, meaning zones of imbalance and extremes. These are the points that price always returns to. At the same time, I watch how the previous candle affected the price movement—this is my mindset for the entire session. If the high or low gets broken and the candle engulfs the previous one, I wait for a reversal. This is crucial in ICT trading.

Next, I do exactly the same thing on the daily chart. The ideal is when the charts overlap—then I get trades with the highest probability. If the daily chart doesn’t show me a clear direction, I wait. Patience is half the success in ICT trading.

Then I move to H4 and H1. Here, I look for confirmation of what I see on the larger timeframes. Every move on higher timeframes has its counterpart in the market-maker animator model on the lower timeframes. This is the market rule I follow.

Now comes TBL—time-based liquidity. These are the highs and lows from specific time intervals. These points are extremely important because this is often where price reverses. I track when they are swept.

Once I have my biases and frames, I switch to M15 and M1. On M15, I look for IRL/ERL, and I pay attention to how price reacts to TBL and to the opening of the EST session at 7:30. This gives me my intraday structure.

I make entries on M1, but my key levels always come from M15. I wait for three confirmations. The first is a change in market structure—I look for an FVG on M1 that aligns with my overall bias from the higher timeframes. I enter on that FVG, placing my stop above the structure, and I set my target at the opposite liquidity.

The second confirmation is SMT divergence. When correlated assets break their correlation, we usually have to expect a big move. I combine this with information from the higher timeframes—then the effect is at its best.

The third is iFVG—internal fair value gap. If one side of the order flow isn’t respected at a key level, we should expect a reversal.

Before every trade, I go through a checklist. Are my biases clear? Does the structure match? Do I have entry confirmations? Only then do I enter.

ICT trading isn’t magic—it’s a system. It requires discipline and practice, but once we master these concepts and learn how to combine them, our trades start to make much more sense. Study these frameworks, test them on your charts, and you’ll see how your trading skills will rise.