Indeed, ICT Turtle Soup (TS) refers to a fake breakout, commonly known as a stop hunt or raid on stops. Turtle Soup simply means Liquidity Sweep.
The concept behind ICT Turtle Soup involves luring retail traders into believing there is a genuine breakout occurring at market highs and lows. It also traps traders who use Smart Money Concepts into perceiving a false Change of Character (CHOCH), after which a Liquidity Sweep occurs.
The idea is to spot the mean reversion that Turtle Soup offers and buy the lows and sell into the highs, and vice versa.

Turtle Soup Trading
The ICT Turtle Soup typically manifests as stop raids above short-term swing highs or lows, enticing retail traders to believe that a breakout is imminent.
We can also anticipate ICT Turtle Soup by looking at a lower timeframe aligned with a higher timeframe PD Array / High Value Area, for example a Fair Value Gap.
Sometimes price forms Liquidity Sweeps around those levels, inducing traders into thinking a big move is incoming. What happens next is that price does the opposite move, collecting stops and then moving in the intended direction.

Turtle Soup Trading
As the saying goes, time plays a crucial role in trading, as there are specific windows during which market volatility increases, leading to larger price movements.
In the context of Turtle Soup Trading Strategy, there are certain time windows that demonstrate a higher likelihood of Turtle Soup patterns occurring, thereby presenting potential high-probability trading opportunities.
Among the time windows where high-probability ICT Turtle Soup is more likely to occur include:
| Session | Time |
|---|---|
| London session open | 2:00 am |
| London Liquidity Injection | 3:45 am – 4:08 am |
| Manipulation | 8:14 am – 8:38 am |
| NY AM Manipulation and session open | 9:23 am – 9:45 am |
| Lunch Liquidity Raid | 12:45 pm – 1:08 pm |
| NY PM Raid | 2:15 pm – 2:38 pm |

Turtle Soup Trading
However, this does not imply that ICT Turtle Soup cannot be high quality without considering timing. In trading, the presence of multiple confluences typically increases the likelihood of a trade idea materializing.
Numerous trading strategies are built around the concept of Turtle Soup. In some of these strategies, Turtle Soup serves as the central focus even without traders realizing it, while in others it plays a supplementary role alongside various other elements. Thus, there is not a single ICT Turtle Soup model; instead, there are several ways to execute it.
Here is an example strategy based on the ICT Turtle Soup concept:

Turtle Soup Trading
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