Far too many aspirant traders in this complicated game of forex trading find themselves endlessly struggling for consistent success. They put in hour upon hour of learning time, have read hundreds if not thousands of blogs or watched videos, yet continue to stray, fail at challenges, and blow accounts. If this sounds too familiar, you’re certainly not alone. You’re the ICT student, bereft of words, while the others flourish on social media and find success. Good thing … it’s not all bleak.
I am a funded day trader managing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a prop firm, and through this article,here is an easy and simple ICT strategy that’ll help you pass your prop firm challenges. This will by the biggest consensus be based on the single most important teaching ICT has ever offered. By the last section, you will be looking at your charts with new confidence and patience.
Understanding the ICT Strategy
What does ICT mean?
ICT stands for Inner Circle Trader, and it is a methodology that will help a trader better understand market mechanics as well as find high-probability trade setups. It is a simplified ICT concept that even newbies are able to understand.
Difficulty in Identifying High-Probability Trading Opportunities
Some traders do not manage to find high-probability setups, and they usually have consecutive losses. Successful trading is a good understanding of market dynamics and the elongation of weekly candles.
Forex trading through prop firms carries an opportunity of managing very huge capital, quite equally facing their challenges and therefore passes by with an equivalently robust strategy.
This is the success strategy, focused with the Euro/USD, GBP/USD pairs, bringing out daily bias, weekly candle expansion, and the power of three.
7 Steps Guide on ICT Strategy
Step 1: Pick Your Pairs
In this strategy, we are going to work only with Euro/USD and GBP/USD. These pairs are liquid and slightly respect technical analysis.
Step 2: Determining the Daily Bias
First off, understand the trend of the daily or weekly chart. Look for recent runs on stops and the draw on liquidity. Identify whether the most recent stop run was to the upside or downside. This puts you on notice for whether you should look to buy or sell.
Step 3: The Weekly Candle Expansion Has to Be Looked upon for Analysis
What we do really, as intraday traders, is try to understand where the weekly is going to expand to. That can be easily done by price reaction in the liquidity pool or imbalances.
Step 4: Validate with Four Hour Structure
Now, with this bias that you carry for the day at hand, have a look at it against the four-hour chart structure. Look out for lower lows and lower highs in a bearish trend or higher highs and higher lows in a bullish trend. This solidifies that market details are fitting with your bias.
Step 5: Find the Weekly Open
Put the chart and mark the weekly open. Bearish traders should try to sell if the price is above the weekly open. If you are bullish, look to make sales just below the power of three weekly open. This will give you an excellent point to enter in the span of a day.
Step 6: Wait for New York or London Rampage
Please only trade the New York Session or the London session—that is, the time at which maximum liquidity. For better trade execution, do not trade outside these sessions.
Step 7: Zoom in to 15-Minute Chart
After having the above successfully in place, zoom to your 15 minutes. Have a look at what indicates as a liquidity pool or higher is being taken and there is then a shift in market structure. This shift must signal that the market is now ready to move in your intended direction.
Entry Strategy
OTE, or Optimal Trade Entry.
OTE works by waiting for a retracement down to the 62% Fib level. Here one puts in a limit order set with a stop above the recent highs for shorts or stop below recents lows for longs. That way, one gets to enter the trade at an optimal price with a tight stop loss.
Sample Trade Setup
Let’s go with an example: let us say that you have a bearish daily bias around the Euro/USD. The 4-hour structure shows this, making lower lows and lower highs. The weekly candle is big, with an expansion over the weekly open, and it’s the London session. You see a 15-minute liquidity pool taken with a shift in market structure.
Place overdue buying limit order in the 62% retracement of a recent move, stopping above the high. The target, then, is the following considerable liquidity pool or a predetermined risk-to-reward ratio.
Managing the Trade
Patience and Discipline
With this, patience is called for once in the trade. Don’t get scared by minor retrenchments. Trust your analysis and let it play out in the market. High-probability setups take time to properly materialize.
Taking Profits
Take profit levels can be sniped. It is absolutely fine, and in fact desirable, to set levels in multiple ways while taking profit. An excellent first-level target is the weekly open or some other very important one-hour locations with liquidity. In most cases, do this to gradually lock in profits.
Human-Centered
Risk management stands a hundred percent important when trading. You never risk more than 1-2% of the account on one trade. Proper position sizing allows the account to be flexible and cover losing streaks.
Conclusion
Succeeding and getting to the stage of a funded trader from the difficulties a prop firm imposes needs a firm and simple strategy in this ICT platform.
Align with market structure and give a larger possibility of success: remember the gravity of three demands, determine the daily bias, and then apply OTE for precision entry.
Key Takeaways
- Select a Pair: Euro/USD, GBP/USD—ultra-liquid and reliable.
- Interpretation: Decide on daily bias according to recent liquidity runs and structural shifts.
- Weekly Candle Expansion: Find the best areas to get into trades by using the weekly opening price.
- Session Timing: Trade during the New York or London sessions for better execution.
- 15 minutes chart finding liquidity pools is the look to market structure shifts for entries.
- OTE Entry: Entry may be at the 62% retracement.
- Risk Management: Always manages your risk, and takes profit progressively.
By implementing this strategy and remaining disciplined, you can expect consistent success adopted to the point of emerging as a funded trader eventually.
