Honest Review of ICT part 1

I cannot put everything I want to in one post. If people do want to hear my opinion I can make another part to this. I will try to be concise as possible with this but also trying to be informative. I will mention what I find misleading and how I made my own strategy away from ‘ICT’ concepts and passed my funded accounts.

Content:

– Concept Originality (Wyckoff, Support resistance OBs)

• 2022 Mentorship
• Separating ICT from the Concepts
• Alternatives

Concept Originality: The IPDA data ranges or whatever he calls them is awfully similar to what Larry Williams used as a trading strategy with 20 day highs and low. I personally, think that this type of classification is simply just the same concept with a different naming convention. Additionally, he also fails to realise that these swings provide little to no value or significance in live trading. The reason for this is that by the time you form a 20 day high or low usually the monthly, weekly and or daily show clear trend direction making it redundant further adding filler. This happens to be true over multiple years on different assets all the information that we can gather from the ‘IPDA data ranges’ can just be seen through the HTF where majority of the institutions trade. However, it may be useful if you are a position trader or someone that does not want to trade intraday. Either way the point is the original source at least in my opinion is from Larry Williams.

MMBM & MMSM: A quick Google search into Wyckoff and you will see that the so called Market maker buy and sell models are the exact same as the findings presented by Wyckoff himself in which he states the behaviour in price shown by large entities in there ability to accumulate and distribute their positions over time. Once again after looking through the key details I see no difference in them at all. The only difference I see is the naming conventions. I think the only take away from this is that large entities adjust their positions on the Monthly, Weekly, Daily and 4h with the Highest time frame showing the least amount of manipulation in where true interest differentials present themselves for long term trends. Despite many videos ICT jumping up and down exclaiming there are huge differences I see none. The key takeaway with Wyckoff theory is that he describes that the large players in the market do indeed control the flow of market direction which should be a positive since following them would allow for decent trades.

Support & Resistance: Once again the order blocks and break of structure or COCH is all part of what seems like the support and resistance methodology. A lot of ICT nerds might combat me on this if you compare them side by side they are essentially the same but a lot of you won’t put in the time to actually see them separately and compare them. You want believe that ICT is true and you want to be blind.

2022 Mentorship: If you wanted to learn anything of value it is not here. The fundamentals of technical analysis HAS to begin with HTF with each episode being 40 mins long and with no information pertaining to any methodology to breakdown the Monthly, Weekly, Daily or 4h and how we can use them together; the series just becomes a 3 candle entry pattern. ICT then hides under the guise of ‘ I am making the lazy people work for it ‘ that is quite a statement when you got nothing to even start with. The video on market structure was not clear the reason for this is that there is no defining which range we are currently looking at. The issue is that there is no clear boundary between what is an ITH and ITL. Additionally, his ramblings about the market being predictable and algorithm may have some merit but it gets quickly disregarded through the nonsensical live streams about live trades in which he claims his stops are being ‘hunted’ in a demo account. He fails to mention time frame alignment in any of the videos does not explain how one can use the market structure from different time frames to assess a likely direction. Additionally, touts the TIME AND PRICE. When in reality all that really means is volatility in FX specifically, we tend to see more consolidation than trending movement in short term frames. The reason for this should make logical sense, FX is used in real life it has implications on real world behaviour, we cannot fluctuate 20% / 30% in a day 500 pips is 50 cents. Hence, we can come to a reasonable conclusion and infer clearly the best days to trade is with news events which then drive movement. Once again, this excludes interest rate news events such as FOMC, CPI and NFP. But never explains this and this realisation is not from ICT either a lot of fundamental books speak about this frequently.

Separating ICT from the Concepts: The Concepts themselves are valid and they do work however, with such terrible execution in terms of defining and creating boundaries in strategies it seems that you get lost and more confused than when you began your trading journey. ICT himself is the worst trader and teacher I have ever seen. The issue with him is that he claims these are his discoveries when they really aren’t. If you are new to trading BabyPips and understanding support / resistance as well as what drives price in YOUR ASSET is key. Understanding the HTF like the MONTHLY, WEEKLY, DAILY and 4H is how you can succeed and making trading easier for yourself. Also understand timeframe alignment once you add these together you can do well. The ‘ICT’ method is just cluster fuck of ‘retail’ concepts with so many different topics and ways of seeing the market no wonder no one can really piece together wtf is going on.

Alternatives: If you are still hell bent on learning ICT the only person that comes close to answering all the unanswered questions you are left with after watching ICTs videos is a dude called MMXM trader you can Google it and find his mentorship videos. This is not a promotion just at least something I can share to help others that have wasted their time trying to learn from a dude that is not all there in the head.

Final thoughts: ICT himself makes the obvious in trading insanely complex. Claims that every move in the market is predictable, the only real world conclusion that can be drawn in terms of predictability is that the entities that move the market do it in such a way that it can be predictable in terms of trend which come from HTF. The element of time is simply the volatility that come with session times or news specifically for Forex because it is by default a stable asset. He has amassed a bunch of idiots to try to figure out the ‘secret code’ to trading. When in reality all someone needs to do is ride the wave from the large bodies in the market. You do not even need to be that accurate. My personal accuracy is around 66%-68% with RR being 1:1.7 not the best but not the worst. I simply trade HTF support and resistance with 4h being the lowest I go for bias. I get maybe 3/4 good trades in a month and I just scalp in the HTF direction.