Most Important ICT Concepts: The Complete List
- Concepts are grouped into seven stages, in the order you should learn them — each stage builds on the one before.
- Every concept has a short definition here and a link to its full step-by-step guide.
- If you are brand new, read the stages top to bottom. If you are revising, jump to any concept from the contents.
- Master the first three stages before touching the advanced confluences — the order matters more than the speed.
Stage 1 — The Two Forces That Move Price
Liquidity is the fuel every market move runs on — the resting stop orders and pending orders that institutions need to fill their large positions. It pools at obvious places: relative equal highs and lows, and prior swing points. Smart money drives price into these pools to fill orders before delivering the real move.
Liquidity comes in two forms. Buy-side liquidity rests above old highs (the stops of sellers and the orders of breakout buyers); sell-side liquidity rests below old lows. Knowing which pool price is likely reaching for is the foundation of directional bias.
A Fair Value Gap is a three-candle imbalance — a gap left when price moves so fast the market skips a price range. Because that range was delivered inefficiently, price often returns to rebalance it, making the FVG one of the most-used entries and targets in the whole methodology.
Displacement is a strong, one-sided move with large-bodied candles — the fingerprint of institutional intent. It is what creates fair value gaps and confirms that a level has been respected. No displacement, no conviction.
Stage 2 — Reading Market Structure
Break of Structure (BOS) confirms a trend is continuing — a clean break of the prior swing in the trend direction. Change of Character (CHoCH) is the first warning the trend is turning — a break of the most recent counter-trend swing. Together they are how you read whether to stay with a move or expect a reversal.
Read the full guide: Break of Structure and Change of Character →
The MSS is the lower-timeframe trigger — the specific structural break, backed by displacement, that signals the reversal is now underway. It is often the confirmation an ICT trader waits for before executing an entry.
Stage 3 — The PD Arrays (Where You Enter)
A PD Array (Premium/Discount Array) is any specific institutional price level within a range — order blocks, fair value gaps, breaker blocks and more. Think of it as the structured menu of places price is likely to react. The whole ICT entry model is about trading from the right PD array at the right time.
An order block is the origin candle of a strong move — the last opposing candle before displacement. It marks where institutions loaded their position, and price frequently returns to it before continuing. It is the most precise version of a supply or demand zone.
Inducement is the trap — an obvious level that tempts retail traders in early, whose stops then become the liquidity that fuels the real move. Learning to spot inducement stops you from being the liquidity.
Stage 4 — Refining the Entry
Split any range at its 50% equilibrium: above is premium (expensive), below is discount (cheap). Smart money buys at a discount and sells at a premium. Trading from the wrong half of the range is one of the most common and costly beginner errors.
The OTE is the 62%–79% Fibonacci retracement of an impulsive leg — the sweet spot where a pullback offers the best risk-to-reward while staying aligned with the move. It refines a PD array entry into a precise price.
Stage 5 — Direction and Time
Daily bias is your answer to one question asked before the session: which way is price most likely to deliver today? A correct bias turns every lower-timeframe setup into a with-trend trade. It is arguably the single most important pre-session decision you make.
Power of 3 is the daily template: Accumulation, Manipulation, Distribution. Price accumulates in a range, manipulates one side to grab liquidity, then distributes the real move. Recognising which phase you are in keeps you from chasing the manipulation.
Kill zones are the high-probability time windows — Asian, London, New York AM and PM — where institutional volume concentrates. Trading inside a kill zone, aligned with your bias, is where the ICT edge is strongest.
The Silver Bullet is a specific one-hour window (New York AM, 10–11 ET) where price reliably delivers a fair value gap entry in the direction of the daily bias. A simple, repeatable, time-boxed setup.
Macros are the short, high-conviction windows inside each kill zone where the algorithm delivers price most aggressively. Knowing the macro times lets you narrow your focus to the minutes that matter most.
Stage 6 — Manipulation and Reversal Setups
The Judas Swing is the false move — typically at the London or New York open — that fakes traders into the wrong direction before the real move begins. It is the manipulation leg of Power of 3, and a high-probability reversal cue once you learn to read it.
Turtle Soup is the failed-breakout reversal: price sweeps a relative equal high or low, fails to follow through, and reverses. It is one of the cleanest entries available, taking the opposite side of retail breakout traders.
SMT divergence is disagreement between two correlated markets at a key level — for example, one index making a higher high while its partner makes a lower high. That divergence is a footprint that smart money is rejecting the level.
Stage 7 — Advanced Confluences and Models
External Range Liquidity is the swing highs and lows that bound a range; Internal Range Liquidity is the FVGs and order blocks inside it. Price oscillates between the two, and reading that oscillation tells you when to target internal versus external liquidity.
Read the full guide: Internal and External Range Liquidity (IRL / ERL) →
A breaker block is an order block that failed and flipped — support that becomes resistance, or the reverse. It marks a decisive shift in who is in control and offers a high-quality entry in the new direction.
The Unicorn Model is a specific high-probability confluence: a breaker block overlapping a fair value gap. When two independent PD arrays line up on the same price, the setup carries far more conviction than either alone.
The 2022 Model is ICT’s consolidated teaching framework — a complete, repeatable sequence from liquidity sweep, to market structure shift, to fair value gap entry. It is the setup that ties the individual concepts into one executable play.
SMC is the popularised cousin of ICT — same foundations of liquidity, imbalance and structure, often taught with slightly different labels. Understanding how the two map onto each other lets you learn from both worlds without confusion.
The Right Order to Learn These
1. The forces — liquidity, imbalance, displacement.
2. The structure — BOS, CHoCH, MSS.
3. The PD arrays — order block, FVG, inducement.
4. The refinement — premium/discount, OTE.
5. Direction and time — daily bias, Power of 3, kill zones, Silver Bullet, macros.
6. The setups — Judas swing, turtle soup, SMT.
7. The confluences — IRL/ERL, breaker, unicorn, the 2022 model.