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ICT YT - 2025-09-20 - Trading All Time Highs and Disregarding TGIF

Last modified by Drunk Monkey on 2025-09-27 14:16
1 00:00:00 --> 00:00:05 ICT: Hey folks, welcome back. So this is September 19. This is Friday. Happy
2 00:00:05 --> 00:00:12 Friday. And before I get into it, I just want to let you know that I may not, I
3 00:00:12 --> 00:00:18 may not be able to post a lecture on Saturday night. I'm going to do my very
4 00:00:18 --> 00:00:23 best. But if I don't, you'll have two of them on Monday, so you'll have one on
5 00:00:23 --> 00:00:28 Monday morning and then Monday evening. So that's the consolation prize. If I
6 00:00:28 --> 00:00:34 can't pull it off tomorrow night because of family matters, then I'll do my very
7 00:00:34 --> 00:00:38 best, obviously, on Monday to give you two lectures there. All right, so let's
8 00:00:38 --> 00:00:42 get into here. This lecture is going to be trading all time highs and when to
9 00:00:42 --> 00:00:47 disregard TGIF. Thank God it's Friday. It's usually when we have a bullish
10 00:00:47 --> 00:00:54 week. You look for 20 to 30% as much as 40% retracement on the weekly range, and
11 00:00:54 --> 00:01:02 or when you're bearish, you expect to see the retracement of 20 to 30% in the
12 00:01:02 --> 00:01:10 weekly range, or up to 40% either or obviously, when we're at all time highs,
13 00:01:10 --> 00:01:15 we want to disregard the TGIF, because it can keep going and keep going and
14 00:01:15 --> 00:01:15 keep going.
15 00:01:21 --> 00:01:25 Right? So we have NASDAQ daily chart on the left hand side, and obviously it
16 00:01:25 --> 00:01:30 just keeps powering higher. As I indicated this week it would. The right
17 00:01:30 --> 00:01:34 hand side is a one minute chart of NASDAQ again. This is the December
18 00:01:34 --> 00:01:43 contract for 2025 NASDAQ E Mini, not the micro, it's the Mini. So all right. So
19 00:01:43 --> 00:01:47 the first thing we want to take a look at here is that small little volume
20 00:01:47 --> 00:01:52 imbalance there. So where we opened up today, while trading was going on, it
21 00:01:52 --> 00:01:57 was already up in here. It still had a volume imbalance there. And this drop
22 00:01:57 --> 00:02:02 down was overnight in the London session. And we came up into here, and
23 00:02:02 --> 00:02:08 then we came back down in and rallied back up into the moderate portion of the
24 00:02:08 --> 00:02:12 day. And we'll look at that price action now. All right, so we have a premium
25 00:02:12 --> 00:02:18 wick here, again, grading those wicks, so we have the close of this candlestick
26 00:02:18 --> 00:02:23 here, the lower quadrant, consequent encroachment halfway point, upper
27 00:02:23 --> 00:02:29 quadrant and the high. Okay, so this is Thursday's premium wick graded. So we
28 00:02:29 --> 00:02:33 are our quadrant levels on it, and then they appear over here on the left hand
29 00:02:33 --> 00:02:39 side. So if you look at the intraday one minute chart, you can see how price ran
30 00:02:39 --> 00:02:44 right up into that swept it by a little bit. That's classic. And then we have a
31 00:02:44 --> 00:02:49 market breakdown. And we'll look at this wick here, and we'll talk about market
32 00:02:49 --> 00:02:56 structure shifts and the valid ones and what's not but I mentioned on Twitter
33 00:02:56 --> 00:03:03 this morning that 24,007 35 I thought was suspect, okay, and the reason why
34 00:03:03 --> 00:03:13 is, obviously it's pre session, sell side liquidity. This gap in here is
35 00:03:13 --> 00:03:19 first presented fair value gap. And we rally up and we draw right back down
36 00:03:19 --> 00:03:24 into it again. So it created it here. Failure to Launch didn't take out that
37 00:03:24 --> 00:03:28 high trades back down in the bodies. Stay inside of the first position. If
38 00:03:28 --> 00:03:37 everybody got rallies, hits the high over here. So it hits it here, then
39 00:03:38 --> 00:03:42 breaks lower. This is not a market structure shift, because it's a wick
40 00:03:43 --> 00:03:46 inside of a buy side and balanced cell sign efficiency. So there's two PD
41 00:03:46 --> 00:03:50 arrays that are going to conflict. We don't want to look at that as a market
42 00:03:50 --> 00:03:55 structure shift. So it trades back up. Yes, this fair value gap. You could have
43 00:03:55 --> 00:04:00 went short there. I'm not trying to do that. Market breaks lower again here.
44 00:04:00 --> 00:04:08 And notice it's just finding sensitivity rate at that fair value gaps, low point
45 00:04:08 --> 00:04:12 that was not meaningful, didn't close, didn't have a body down there, so it
46 00:04:12 --> 00:04:16 just touched it rally back once more. Here's another fair value gap in here.
47 00:04:17 --> 00:04:20 You could take that short. There's nothing wrong with that short for you.
48 00:04:20 --> 00:04:24 I'm not taking that short. And then we had the market break lower trade deck
49 00:04:24 --> 00:04:28 down into the first potential fair value gap. Look at the bodies. The wick trades
50 00:04:28 --> 00:04:33 down into it, but it doesn't breach it to the downside, rallies once more into
51 00:04:34 --> 00:04:40 and trades up into that fair value gap there, which we continue through, which
52 00:04:40 --> 00:04:47 makes this, what a reclaimed bearish fair value gap. Now this imbalance in
53 00:04:47 --> 00:04:52 here, we want to see it break through that and around here, consequent
54 00:04:52 --> 00:04:56 encroachments, trading there, and if you look real small fair value gap in that
55 00:04:56 --> 00:05:00 little area as well. So these are all things that were pertinent to. This. And
56 00:05:00 --> 00:05:06 if you watch the trade that I uploaded today on YouTube, I didn't remember to
57 00:05:06 --> 00:05:12 put the the trade execution video in last night's upload, but I did since
58 00:05:12 --> 00:05:17 then edit okay, but I have to make a note to make sure I put this one in the
59 00:05:17 --> 00:05:21 comment section so that way you can see it. For those that aren't aware what I'm
60 00:05:21 --> 00:05:25 talking about here. All these things were outlined real time. And market
61 00:05:25 --> 00:05:31 trades lower. It trades down into the first percent of the fair pay gap. And
62 00:05:31 --> 00:05:35 notice it was here, in here, it was sensitive, but now we're back into it
63 00:05:35 --> 00:05:38 again. A third time is not a charm. Okay? It's gonna, it's gonna break
64 00:05:38 --> 00:05:43 through and targeted in that sell side, on that low, and these relative equal
65 00:05:43 --> 00:05:48 lows here. So reaching for pre market session, sell side liquidity and we get
66 00:05:48 --> 00:05:55 there now I showed in the trade example how when you get overzealous by taking
67 00:05:55 --> 00:06:00 your target, which you first end up with here, that's pre market session, sell
68 00:06:01 --> 00:06:04 side liquidity pool. You want to take that when you're in a primary bullish
69 00:06:04 --> 00:06:08 market, you want to take that like a tick or two above or right at it, and
70 00:06:08 --> 00:06:11 worst case scenario, maybe one tick below it, because you can get these very
71 00:06:11 --> 00:06:16 fickle type reverses like this, when it's an underlying bullish market. Now
72 00:06:16 --> 00:06:19 it's a bearish market, and you can extend those targets and try to reach
73 00:06:19 --> 00:06:23 for a little bit more, try get a little bit more cream out of it. Well, I showed
74 00:06:23 --> 00:06:27 case that today, and you saw that it was unwilling to get to my overzealous
75 00:06:27 --> 00:06:32 target, so I had to take off two of them. Here's the example of the
76 00:06:32 --> 00:06:39 executions. Okay, you see 24,007, 98 right up in here. That's at the high end
77 00:06:39 --> 00:06:44 of the reclaim that everybody got. And I added one more right at the upper
78 00:06:44 --> 00:06:49 quadrant levels. Look at that price, 24,007 90.50 fill.
79 00:06:49 --> 00:06:53 24,007 90.50 as you would expect from ICT, and
80 00:06:54 --> 00:06:57 then the market breaks lower and trades right back up into here. Could have
81 00:06:57 --> 00:07:02 added into this and broke lower. Immediate rebounds in here, just
82 00:07:02 --> 00:07:06 delicious on the downside, breaking lower touch, the consequent encroachment
83 00:07:06 --> 00:07:11 here breaks and delivers rate blow, 24,007 35 then it has this kind of
84 00:07:11 --> 00:07:14 gnarly retracement in here, and then ultimately comes back down and does a
85 00:07:14 --> 00:07:19 much more meaningful slide lower, which is, you know, it's part of the game when
86 00:07:19 --> 00:07:24 you're trading short when it's primarily bullish. But if the setups there folks,
87 00:07:24 --> 00:07:27 take it and you have a little bit more experience, and I think I probably have
88 00:07:27 --> 00:07:32 a little bit more experience with ICT concepts than the next guy. So I'm going
89 00:07:32 --> 00:07:36 to take them, I'm going to show you what it looks like when you're doing it. Now,
90 00:07:36 --> 00:07:39 later on in the afternoon, had I been in front of the charts, I would have been
91 00:07:39 --> 00:07:43 all over this bad boy, this little section of price action at volume and
92 00:07:43 --> 00:07:47 balance, because we, in fact, traded back into that. So I'm extending the
93 00:07:47 --> 00:07:51 first potential fair buy cap over here into the afternoon. Here's where, again,
94 00:07:51 --> 00:07:55 where the entry short was, and then my fill, and then finally getting stopped
95 00:07:55 --> 00:07:58 out on last two because I trapped stop loss to halfway point, consequent
96 00:07:58 --> 00:08:03 encouragement of the first principal, that little gnarly retracement here,
97 00:08:03 --> 00:08:07 then it broke lower and intruded right down into that volume and balance on the
98 00:08:07 --> 00:08:12 daily chart. I mean, look how beautiful that is. That's this right here. So we
99 00:08:12 --> 00:08:20 were up in here, up here, and came all the way back down intraday to there,
100 00:08:20 --> 00:08:25 then right back up. That's exactly what I explained on Tuesday's first lecture
101 00:08:25 --> 00:08:29 this week. Go back and listen to that again. This is exactly what I told you
102 00:08:29 --> 00:08:35 it would do. The market rallies up. Look at this crazy rally. Back up. They're
103 00:08:35 --> 00:08:38 not letting anybody get on board with that. This is your only opportunity
104 00:08:38 --> 00:08:42 here. First fitness very back up. At the consequent encroachment the bodies are
105 00:08:42 --> 00:08:47 expecting, I'm sorry, respecting, and then sends it higher, right up in here
106 00:08:48 --> 00:08:52 to take out that high. So scrubbing this over again, seeing everything a little
107 00:08:52 --> 00:08:59 bit better, crunched and compressed, today's initial high, and then the black
108 00:08:59 --> 00:09:04 line is Thursday's daily high. That's this right here. Okay, it runs that
109 00:09:04 --> 00:09:11 liquidity out, and we have that liquidity being taken here, and
110 00:09:12 --> 00:09:19 ultimately it just keeps on powering higher, almost to 24,900 so that was
111 00:09:19 --> 00:09:25 actually a pretty impressive. Rally off that in the afternoon. But again, this
112 00:09:25 --> 00:09:30 is why you do not try to pick tops at all time highs and look for reasons for
113 00:09:30 --> 00:09:34 it. To use that daily chart, as I taught you over here, they're going to come
114 00:09:34 --> 00:09:38 back those imbalances, that volume imbalance, the fair value gap, and
115 00:09:38 --> 00:09:42 inside these wicks, if you don't look at this stuff, it's going to completely go
116 00:09:42 --> 00:09:47 right past you, and you'll never know it as an opportunity. All right, quickly
117 00:09:47 --> 00:09:53 into Forex. Here's the dollar index. And I've mentioned that if this starts to
118 00:09:53 --> 00:09:58 rally up, I want to see this act as an version fair value gap, and I graded
119 00:09:58 --> 00:10:02 that as well. It's. Is a volume imbalance right there. So with these
120 00:10:02 --> 00:10:06 levels here on the daily chart, transposed over to the five minute
121 00:10:06 --> 00:10:11 chart, you can see how we drop down at midnight, right at the upper quadrant
122 00:10:11 --> 00:10:15 level of that inversion, fair value gap rallies comes right back down into a
123 00:10:15 --> 00:10:26 fair value gap and bullish breaker. See that hits their rallies and just keeps
124 00:10:26 --> 00:10:29 powering up into that daily volume imbalance. And then once it gets there,
125 00:10:29 --> 00:10:34 randomly, it just sells off and it moves into consolidation. So this is kind of a
126 00:10:34 --> 00:10:38 little bit of a tricky area to be trading Dollar Index. Not that I
127 00:10:38 --> 00:10:42 recommend trading dollar I've never traded Dollar Index. It's simply a
128 00:10:42 --> 00:10:45 barometer to tell me if currencies should be bullish or bearish, and if
129 00:10:45 --> 00:10:52 it's risk on, risk off for all assets. Okay, switch up a little bit here. So
130 00:10:52 --> 00:10:57 POUND DOLLAR, this is Cable This is actually one of my favorite forex pairs
131 00:10:57 --> 00:11:01 to trade, and I traded this when I was a commodity trader, trading the pound
132 00:11:01 --> 00:11:06 futures, the buy center balance, sell side, efficiency here, I greeted that as
133 00:11:06 --> 00:11:11 well, and the market starts to sell off, as we expected, with the euro to
134 00:11:11 --> 00:11:16 continue lower. The pound did the same thing. So dollar was going higher. It
135 00:11:16 --> 00:11:20 moved above that range I told you I wanted to see, and it would treat that
136 00:11:21 --> 00:11:25 inversion fair value gap as a discounted rate. We've seen that. And then the
137 00:11:26 --> 00:11:30 market breaks lower and trades right back into this fair value gap, this
138 00:11:30 --> 00:11:36 discount wick. This is for your notes. Okay, this is both forex and commodities
139 00:11:36 --> 00:11:42 and futures and whatever else you want to trade. Okay, if we open where we
140 00:11:42 --> 00:11:49 close, listen to what I'm saying on the daily chart. If we open where we closed,
141 00:11:53 --> 00:11:57 and we have a discount wick and we're bearish, you want to grade that's that
142 00:11:57 --> 00:12:04 that discount wick, because you're going to be able to use that in the first 30
143 00:12:04 --> 00:12:09 units to an hour of trading, and it'll be very sensitive to these levels. Here
144 00:12:09 --> 00:12:13 we can see we have true day start, which is midnight, Eastern Time. If you don't
145 00:12:13 --> 00:12:22 know what that is, go and look at my 2016 2017 paid mentorship content that I
146 00:12:22 --> 00:12:24 uploaded right to my YouTube channel. There's Yahoos out there trying to get
147 00:12:24 --> 00:12:29 you to pay for that stuff. It's all for free on my YouTube channel, all you have
148 00:12:29 --> 00:12:32 to do is go into the playlist and you'll see it, have it broken up into every
149 00:12:32 --> 00:12:36 individual month. And incidentally, also people keep emailing me, asking me for
150 00:12:36 --> 00:12:42 the PDF files. The PDF files on the 2016 2017, mentorship, the only thing that
151 00:12:42 --> 00:12:47 was was the slides that you see in the video. So if you want that PDF, just
152 00:12:47 --> 00:12:50 screenshot every slide when I make a change, because that's all that ever
153 00:12:50 --> 00:12:54 was. There was no additional notes. It was just for them to have something to
154 00:12:54 --> 00:12:57 scribble, one and extra notes, because there's lots of places on there where
155 00:12:57 --> 00:12:59 they could add it, kind of like what I'm doing with here. Okay, but the they
156 00:12:59 --> 00:13:07 didn't get this. This is something new for you. Public distribution. All right,
157 00:13:07 --> 00:13:11 so Asian session, buy side liquidity. The market trades up into that sweeps,
158 00:13:11 --> 00:13:16 it breaks lower, and then comes right back up to a fair value gap. This in
159 00:13:16 --> 00:13:20 here break away during London Open kill zone. Now, when I trade Forex, I'm
160 00:13:20 --> 00:13:26 looking at 1am to 5am that's my entire universe of London trading. So I always
161 00:13:27 --> 00:13:31 make allowance for daylight savings time and all kinds of times forward that may
162 00:13:31 --> 00:13:35 come around that. So here's what I look at. If you ever want to know what's the
163 00:13:35 --> 00:13:39 actual times that Michael would have on his chart. It's 1am Eastern Time to 5am
164 00:13:40 --> 00:13:44 anywhere in there. I'm looking for a setup. Okay, so here we get that set up.
165 00:13:44 --> 00:13:48 Here it breaks lower. Look at the body's respect and consequence of that wick
166 00:13:48 --> 00:13:55 over here dives into just short of the fair value gap high here. And then we go
167 00:13:55 --> 00:14:00 into what New York open kill zone, 7am market breaks down a little bit comes
168 00:14:00 --> 00:14:04 right back up to a bearish fair value gap, and then tanks right into lower
169 00:14:04 --> 00:14:09 quadrant of the fair value gap over here on the daily chart for POUND DOLLAR,
170 00:14:09 --> 00:14:13 really, really nice little setups in here. This is just a dandy of a move on
171 00:14:13 --> 00:14:18 the London side and continuation in New York, as you might expect, digging into
172 00:14:18 --> 00:14:21 a discount array derived from the daily chart. Hi,
173 00:14:30 --> 00:14:34 folks, that's it for this week. If you liked what you've seen this week, I
174 00:14:34 --> 00:14:38 promise, Lord willing. If I can come back, because he's in charge of
175 00:14:38 --> 00:14:42 everything, he calls me home, I can't do anything about it, right? But will we
176 00:14:42 --> 00:14:46 continue this obviously next week? And like I said, If I don't get the
177 00:14:46 --> 00:14:50 opportunity to upload a lecture on Saturday evening, you will have two of
178 00:14:50 --> 00:14:54 them, one of them on Monday morning, before noon, and then the standard eight
179 00:14:54 --> 00:14:58 o'clock upload Eastern Time, Monday through Friday. Do enjoy your weekend.
180 00:14:58 --> 00:15:03 Do be safe and. Talk to you next time I wish you good luck and good trading.