How New Students Should Start Part 2

Date: 2026-09-01

Gap Context and Liquidity Draw

[00:00] ICT: All right, so we’re looking at today’s morning session. Initially, we’re going to look for these highs right here to be drawn to, so that’s what we’ll look for right out of the gate. During the Opening Range, we’ve got a huge discount gap on the open, and we’re inside Monday’s First Presented Fair Value Gap on the daily chart. We have sell-side liquidity down here, so price has been moving lower.

[01:39] ICT: So I want to see if price can get up here, sweep that buy-side liquidity, and then roll back toward the sell side. We have a huge range before getting back to yesterday’s settlement, so there’s a very large gap.

I’d prefer to see price leave this low intact, run higher to clear that liquidity, and then come back down. By doing that, it would engineer additional sell-side liquidity underneath.

Then price could come back for this low and maybe—maybe—make an attempt to reach the lower octant of that daily buy-side imbalance, sell-side inefficiency.

ICT: All right, so it did take out the low. Hmm. We’re looking for it—this is buy side.

Yesterday, when we closed our session, I told you we were going lower, and we went lower significantly—to the tune of about 500 handles.

All right, well, they keep wanting to sell it off. We have the lower quadrant down here on the daily BISI. If price were going to go higher to take out that buy side, ideally it would do it here after taking these lows right here, because the breakout artists are trying to sell short here.

[03:58] ICT: So that would be the best time for price to come back for it, after taking this liquidity and breaking down aggressively. If we can get back above the upper half and inside here, then use that as a discount array to climb higher, take out the initial high of the day, and then clear these smooth levels over here. These are too smooth. See that? We’d look for price to come straight back up in here and clear that. As for how much of the gap it could fill, we’ll have to look and see where the midpoint of that Opening Range Gap is.

First Presented FVG Framework

[04:50] ICT: So it’s inside Tuesday’s First Presented Fair Value Gap from August 25th. We’re looking for a run up into Tuesday’s First Presented Fair Value Gap. That’s how we blend those two things together.

Now, hypothetically—since we’re tape reading and not doing any executions this week—we’re long with the stop below the low. We’ll say the stop is at 29,061.

ICT: Now we don’t want to see any bodies in the lower half of that Monday First Presented Fair Value Gap. No bodies down here.

[07:30] ICT: It can wick into it, preferably it doesn’t. That’s enough for price to start ripping higher now. Pull this up, clear this high, and tear into these equal highs. Once it gets there, I wouldn’t want to see price go up here just to come right back down into this area.

I’d want to see it clear these highs, clear these highs over here, and then rip into these. So there are two pools of liquidity right there.

[08:23] ICT: That would be a stop-out covering costs. No loss for the day yet, so we’ll just call it breakeven so far. I’m surprised it didn’t come up here and clear that liquidity.

[09:56] ICT: That’s so obvious. It looks like they may be coming down one more time for another run on that low, then rip it back into the Opening Range Gap. Far below that low, we have the lower quadrant of the daily buy-side imbalance, sell-side inefficiency.

If we can leave this partially open like that, it would be perfect for a potential Inversion Fair Value Gap once price trades a little lower, if it wants to do that. Or, if it stops right here and doesn’t completely close back into this candlestick’s low, the next candle could open, trade down, and use it as a foothold.

ICT: All right, so if we can get back above that and treat it as a foothold, price can reach up into this one more time. Below there, your lower quadrant level has already been reached. Yeah, we’re definitely in our seasonal tendency for lower prices. I’m glad I mentioned that two weeks ago.

[12:42] ICT: So yeah, this is today’s First Presented Fair Value Gap—Tuesday—and we’ll extend it to the right. I’d be testing the waters here with a small position.

ICT: See, 67.5 is the fill, with a 29.50 stop. If we can climb up into this area here, we’ll see if price can get a little deeper into the Opening Range Gap.

Inversion FVG as Foothold

[15:01] ICT: The 9:30 open is right there, so that’s the gap opening. We extended it a little bit here. Now we want to see price get up inside this First Presented Fair Value Gap and treat it as an Inversion Fair Value Gap. Because it was formed on a down-close candle, we do not want to see it behave as a premium array and send price lower. That’s why I have it shaded orange.

What I want to see is price trade above it, come back down into it, treat it as a foothold, and then run right back up into these two buy-side liquidity pools here.

[15:57] ICT: Hmm. Hypothetically, the stop would roll to 29.70, which would cover costs. Now I want to see speed. If price starts stuttering here, it needs to close above the halfway point of this wick—its Consequent Encroachment level. That’s what I’m watching. I want to see a close above that dashed line.

[17:32] ICT: And that will give us confirmation that we’re likely to clear these buy-side liquidity pools. How far beyond this buy side should you expect price to go if it wants to run higher? Right there. That’s a reasonable objective. So we’ll be looking for 29,212.

We’re now at the high of Monday, August 24th’s First Presented Fair Value Gap. We don’t want to see any bodies in the lower half of this. These two PD Arrays are essentially sharing a little bit of space right here.

[18:11] ICT: We want to see it tear off into this high, accelerate through it, and then reach right up into 29,212. Hmm, there we go. There’s some legs behind it. Let’s go.

All right, so we cleared the intraday high. Now we want to see price really start spooling toward these pools of buy-side liquidity. Watch this close and see if it wants to close above that dashed line. That would be confirmation for higher prices. It hasn’t done it yet, so we need to see it either start running now or at least build a close above that level because we have a wick here.

[19:26] ICT: I’d prefer to see price run over top of that. By doing so, it would automatically give us a close above this level—or, more specifically, this is the wick I’m referring to. That wick needs to be completely overtaken by this candle or the very next one, preferably this one. If this candle does it, that indicates real strength.

So now we have this candle returning back to Monday, August 24th’s First Presented Fair Value Gap.

ICT: So it’s definitely going to have no problem getting up into these pools of liquidity. We want to see the orders resting here get run completely over, and then price extend up into 29,212.

[21:52] ICT: Hypothetically, we’ll take a partial off at 29,172, and move our stop to 29,100. It shouldn’t need to trade back down there at all. So there’s the hypothetical stop. We’ll call this our partial, and this is our terminus for this morning.

If it goes to the stop at 29,100, we’ve hypothetically banked 33.5 handles. Now we want to see the bodies stay in the upper half of this wick. That’s ideal. So let’s measure it from here to there.

We're gonna say hypothetically we take one off here.

ICT: Okay, so 49 handles were taken on one partial. We dug down into this wick, which is in the upper half of Monday, August 24th’s First Presented Fair Value Gap. So this candle—or the very next candle—needs to get some legs going to the upside.

If we get a run higher, even if the candle doesn’t close, once price trades up above here, the stop will roll to just underneath this candlestick’s current low, which is 29,106.

Large-Gap Day Expectations

[26:10] ICT: So we’ll put six more handles into the stop.* On large-gap days like today, where the gap is around 400 handles or more, you always have to at least give price an opportunity to trade back into the gap.*

It may end up being a moot point because the market could be exceedingly weak today and simply continue selling off, making the gap relatively unimportant at the moment. If you try it and get stopped out, that’s okay, because it’s usually indicative of an easier setup coming afterward.

[27:06] ICT: So be willing to sacrifice that, like we’re doing here. We’re trying to get up into the gap. Price can come down and hit that 29,100 stop. If it hits that, then we sit still and wait a little bit because we have news coming out in about four minutes. We have the ISM number or something—a medium-impact driver.

What did I say, medium? Yeah. Listen here, I’ll be trying to correct you. I’m ICT, remember that.

I’d like to get the stop up a little higher than this because that news will probably create a little whipsaw, and with the stop this close, it’ll be easy for price to hit that 29,100 level.

ICT: I don’t think I’m escaping this one, though. Usually I’m pretty good with the stop losses, but I don’t think this one’s getting escaped. All right, so that’s a stop-out. We got how many? 49 handles. Yes. All right, so we have 49 handles there, and we had 33.5 or 32.5 handles on the first partial. So not bad, not bad.

[29:06] ICT: Now we’re going to see what impact the news has. We came down into the First Presented Fair Value Gap, so I’m going to watch and see. I haven’t abandoned the long idea yet. Let’s give price a chance to book something ahead of that 10:00 news. I still like 29,212.

Remember, we trended overnight—I mean, a serious trend. So it’s reasonable to anticipate this session being consolidation during the morning session. That’s why I’m saying, if we can get a run up into here, it’ll clear this buy side and then rip into this level (Daily BISI C.E. at 29,212).

[30:05] ICT: And that’s about as far as I see the AM session going because of the type of profile it would be working with. I’m not talking about Market Profile. I mean the schematic of how I see price action potentially booking as an overview—how it should behave.

Right now we’re in consolidation, and that’s reasonable. It’s reasonable to expect that. I would test one long in here with a stop at 85. So we’ll say 103.50 entry, 80 stop, and we’re going to say it’s two minis.

[30:42] ICT: So we pulled down into the First Presented Fair Value Gap and the low of Monday, August 24th’s First Presented Fair Value Gap. I want to see an aggressive rip up into here. Hopefully they’ll put out some kind of fake news, this administration.

All right, so we got up into that wick again, but it rejected pretty sharply and very quickly. I want to see price run over top of that wick. If it’s going to be bullish, it’ll run right back over top of this on the next candle or turn this candle completely back into a bullish candle.

[31:43] ICT: You’re operating in consolidation, so you have to be really, really nimble and very forgiving of yourself if you get chopped up. If you’re brand new, let that experience happen while you’re simply watching price. It’s important to understand what it feels like to expect protraction—one-directional price movement—because otherwise you won’t recognize the danger of getting excited and chasing a move. All right, the stop would go to 105. What did I say the hypothetical fill was?

[32:41] ICT: It’s just me keeping track of this. I’ll get my notepad out. Whenever I’m giving you numbers, you need to be right next to them. You should have a notepad beside you and be writing things down. Just watching isn’t enough. I yell at my students for that, and here you are, my son, not doing it.

We want to see price get above and close above that blue-shaded area, which is the upper half of that wick. We’ll say the stop is at 29,010, so it’s definitely covering costs.

[33:11] ICT: We’ll say this would be a partial. Up here at this wick, we want to see the bodies stay in the upper half of it. That’s a stop-out, so costs were covered there.

That looks meaningful. All right, so we’re going to sell short right there. We’re in at 94.50. That’s the hypothetical short fill, and we’re looking for price to rip lower and take out that low right there. We’ll use a stop at 130. We’ll say two minis for the tape-reading hypothetical.

[34:47] ICT: We want to see price stay inside of Monday’s First Presented Fair Value Gap. Hmm, watch this wick. Take half of that—from the midpoint down to the close of that candlestick—and that’s where we’re going to look for premium sensitivity. So it’d be something like that. Not that color. No extension.

Add to it there—two more. So now we have four minis short, with the add filled at 109.50. That news didn’t really have all that much impact.

[36:41] ICT: It looks like they used this to take it back down into the day’s First Presented Fair Value Gap. I’m wrong, so I’m closing. That was a 20-point hit. Here’s the 130 level; that would’ve been a full stop-out if price went there. Very good. That would be a full stop. So I see the stop.

All right, now if price touches that blue line again, we’re going long four. I’ll take the four here at 134.25. The stop is here underneath this low.

[38:17] ICT: This is tape reading. You’re not pushing buttons on a demo account, you’re not watching fake P&L numbers go up and down. You’re just getting a feel for reading price. The stop would be under here. We have a Rejection Block right here—up-close candles and the closing price. I want to see accumulation there, not price roll over top of it. We want to see it use that area and go higher.

No partials up here yet, so we’re going to move this up. Actually, we’ll take it at 195. Where’s that?

Long Bias in Consolidation

[39:36] ICT: I’ll add two more. We’re inside this buy-side imbalance, sell-side inefficiency. Treat that as an Institutional Order Flow Entry Drill. We just got in there, and we want to leave this portion open.

Because we’re in consolidation, which is the profile we’re working with for the morning session, I’m more inclined to look long because of the influence of the gaps. We have a huge Regular Trading Hours Opening Range Gap. If we look at it this way, that Regular Trading Hours gap becomes much easier to see.

[40:53] ICT: That’s the difference between yesterday and today. There’s a lot of open air space up there. I know people are going to look at this and say, “Wow, that’s a lot of stuff going on on the chart.” I’ll explain all of that when we’re done.

Because we’re in consolidation, I’m more inclined to take longs. If I take a trade, I want to be more heavily weighted toward the long side because it’s more likely for price to make a run up into the overnight gap than it is to continue pursuing lower prices.

[41:35] ICT: It’s not to say price can’t go lower. It just means that because of that huge gap, I’m more inclined to expect the buys to produce the surprising move—an exaggerated run in my favor—rather than trying to press shorts on a day with such a large gap.

This wick right here, we want to watch the upper half of it. We’ll just say it’s around the top of this area, although the actual midpoint is a little lower. We do not want to see candle bodies exploring below that.

[42:42] ICT: See how the box I drew for the buy-side imbalance, sell-side inefficiency is slightly lower than the wick itself? We don’t want bodies below that. Wicks can form by probing beyond the boundary, but the bodies shouldn’t be down there. We’re back near my entry now. Remember, the stop loss is just below that candlestick’s low. That little alert right there will tell you when we reach 10:30, which completes the First Hour’s Dealing Range. Once that happens, it becomes much more likely that the gap remains open for a while.

[43:33] ICT: I think there’s a stop.

Okay, now this becomes a potential Inversion Fair Value Gap. If we close below it, then it qualifies as an Inversion Fair Value Gap because we’ve already taken out a high with this run here.

***See how price overall is in no hurry to get anywhere? That’s because we had a lot of movement lower overnight. ***

So far, though, we still haven’t closed below this area, so it is not yet an Inversion Fair Value Gap, even though price traded below it here and here.

[45:08] ICT: The close below is what qualifies it. See, it didn’t do it there either, so price is still staying inside this area and operating under the same framework. I’m going to hypothetically go long here at 132.

So, 132 long right there, with the stop just below this low. That’s roughly 20 to 21 handles of risk. We’ll say it’s two minis, again favoring the long side because of the overnight gap. And we never saw this blue-shaded area act as an Inversion Fair Value Gap, so according to my rules, it never told us that price wanted to go lower.

[46:22] ICT: As soon as we get to 10.30 (The First Hour of Trading completed), things should start becoming a little more decisive—either higher or lower. There we go. See, you people thought I forgot how to do this stuff.

There would be a partial here, and the stop rolls to 29,135, so there’s no open risk now. We’ll put 35.5 handles there. That partial from earlier wasn’t part of this idea, so disregard it. We’ll say I didn’t get that.

[47:53] ICT: So if it comes down and stops me out, that’s fine—the trade is even. But I don’t want this earlier partial to count for this particular run. So I’ll take a partial here and sacrifice the run to this level if price wants to reverse after getting there. That’s simply something I’m willing to assume. See, I have another buy-side imbalance, sell-side inefficiency here.

[48:41] ICT: So far, what we want to see is an Institutional Order Flow Entry Drill, which is basically what price has done. It trades just a little bit into the gap for one candle. We don’t want half-gap closure or full-gap closure. We want to see it just dip its toe in there and then say, “Nah, I don’t need to go down there. I’ve got things to do higher.”

ICT: So we bumped that other buy-side liquidity, but very shallowly.

[51:00] ICT: Right in here. It’s just a little bump. That’s enough, but nonetheless, because of the gap, I’d prefer to see price put a body above that level. That’s much more preferable. So where are we? We still have a small segment of price action that hasn’t been filled within that gap.

[51:58] ICT: Like I said, if order flow is still bullish, we want to see this portion of the buy-side imbalance, sell-side inefficiency stay open and not come back down to fill it. Again, I’m pantomiming a new student—someone exploring these ideas. I’m not expecting them to know everything I’m doing. I’m basically compressing what would probably be the first two months of a new student’s observations into this exercise. Obviously, I can’t truly recreate day one because I can’t forget my own experience.

[52:59] ICT: That’s the problem. So I’m trying, to the best of my ability, to approximate what it would feel like for a new student using the things I teach: what observations they would make, how they could test them, and what it feels like when something doesn’t work. The important part is learning how to keep coming back, continue tape reading, and not become emotionally attached to the outcome of each individual hypothetical transaction.

Confluent Gap and Daily Levels

[53:32] ICT: Now we have this key level because two things overlap here. First, it’s part of the Opening Range Gap—this right here is the 9:30 opening price. Then we also have levels from the daily buy-side imbalance, sell-side inefficiency. So we have two PD Arrays layering at essentially the same level.

ICT: Okay, now this is becoming a little problematic because we have high, high, high, high, high. Price needs to really tear through that, or we’re going downtown. So we’re going to take a partial off at 53.5. That’s a 20-handle partial.

If you ever have an inefficiency on the daily time frame and you grade it with the Fib, and those levels line up with an exact level on the Opening Range Gap like we have here, that’s important because these are measurements on the Opening Range Gap.

[56:35] ICT: Every one of these lines—watch. From this candlestick’s opening, go straight up. Here’s 1, 2, 3, 4. That’s the midpoint, or the Opening Range Gap Consequent Encroachment. Normally, we look for that to be traded to with about a 70% likelihood by 10:00 a.m., but we haven’t seen it yet. So now we’re waiting for a deferred delivery to see whether price can still get there. It could also avoid it altogether today.

But I particularly like this level because it’s also part of the daily buy-side imbalance, sell-side inefficiency—that large gray box on the daily chart.

ICT: So there are two levels lining up right at 29,212. That’s why I care more about price reaching that level than reaching the mid-gap, even though there are several things suggesting the mid-gap is likely too.

I don’t want to fade that on a day like today because it’s Non-Farm Payroll week, it’s the day after significant consolidation, and we had a huge overnight run lower. So I want a low-hanging-fruit objective, especially because this is shaping up like a consolidation-profile day.

[58:05] ICT: So I’m just looking for price to get there. If it can get to here, that’s a partial. Then, if it reaches 29,212, I want to see whether it has any unction to continue higher or whether it gets there, gives up the ghost, and breaks aggressively lower. We’ll see. We shall see.

For all the students watching this as a delayed lecture because you’re watching the recording, you can see how these ideas transition from a trending session into a choppy consolidation, while price is still working toward a directional objective. We’ve already taken a partial with 20 handles, and the stop still sits at 29,135 even.

[58:57] ICT: That covers costs on the balance of the hypothetical position. We’ve traded above that old buy-side liquidity several times. I changed the line, but this is where it originally was. We traded above it on this candle, this candle, this candle, and this candle. So we’re at a crossroads now. We’re sitting at a key level—the lowest octant of the Opening Range Gap. Then the lowest quadrant of the Opening Range Gap is here, and that aligns with the same level from the daily buy-side imbalance, sell-side inefficiency.

[59:54] ICT: So it’s very, very tricky. You have to submit yourself to whatever happens. If price goes down and takes your stop, you’re breakeven on the balance while already having taken a 20-handle partial. Being upset about getting stopped out after that would be foolish, especially if you’re brand new. But price keeps trying to dig higher, higher, higher, higher. It didn’t make a higher high there, so we’ll see what we get. If we really break down through here, this entire area could become an Inversion Fair Value Gap.

[01:00:40] ICT: See how they used it here? Ideally, we don’t want price coming back down there because that would demonstrate bullishness. If it can’t trade back down there and instead continues higher, that’s underlying bullish order flow. We’re in that 10:30 hour now. I told you things would start speeding up because the First Hour’s Dealing Range is now in place. Proprietary algorithms will start firing off. After 10:30, once this candlestick closes, you should begin seeing more animation in price action. That’s the nature of the beast.

[01:01:37] ICT: A little bit more secures a partial. Now we have a nice, clean body above those relative equal highs, which is what I said earlier I wanted to see.

So this line right here and the other line from those two time frames—there’s our partial. We’ve secured somewhere around 60 to 70 handles. I lost track of the exact number, so we’ll call it 60 handles. Now we obviously want to see price reach this next level, and if it starts trading above it, we’ll look to bring the stop loss up.

[01:03:05] ICT: But I’ll have to see how this candlestick closes and what things look like if we touch these lines. I could still be wrong. It happens sometimes. Overall, for a very challenging morning with a very large range gap, we only had one losing transaction, giving back about 20 handles out of roughly 150. So being net around 125 to 130 handles on the day isn’t bad. That’s how you encourage yourself while doing this without ever placing a demo trade.

Blending Higher and Lower Timeframes

[01:03:53] ICT: Don’t worry about the hypothetical pretend money. That’s not important. What’s important is reading price action and paying attention to the specific things I teach on the YouTube channel—the lectures and the concepts I call salient. Today we’re primarily dealing with First Presented Fair Value Gaps and Opening Range Gaps: where they form, where they sit, and how they relate to what I explained in yesterday’s first lecture.

So we’re bridging two schools of thought: higher-time-frame PD Arrays and key levels, transposing them onto the lower time frames, and then blending that with the difference between where we settled during Regular Trading Hours yesterday at 4:14 p.m. Eastern Time and where we opened today at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time.

[01:04:43] ICT: That’s the beginning of Regular Trading Hours at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time, but they end at 4:14 p.m. Eastern Time. All right, we hit it.

So now the question is: do we see any kind of premium sensitivity there—in other words, what you would traditionally call resistance—or does price trade through it and create a PD Array above it that we can use? We’re going to trail the stop to this candlestick’s low, take one off, and say we have two minis left.

[01:05:44] ICT: We’re going to take another one off at 29,213, if it can book there. There you go—it booked.

So we have another partial, and now we have one contract left trailing with a stop just below that low. We’re just adding it up today. It keeps building higher and higher, and there will still be people in the comments asking, “Why didn’t you take a trade?” while forgetting that I’m teaching a brand-new student who wouldn’t be expected to take a trade—not even on demo.

As a trader, this would be perfectly acceptable. I know I’m looking for some measure of return back inside the Opening Range Gap.

The ideal scenario would be today’s First Presented Fair Value Gap here, here, and here. Those would be your entries across these candles. If you’re being really aggressive, this right here would be your last opportunity to add onto the pyramid.

[01:08:09] ICT: If price continues higher, you could use the Order Block here. That’s that. The open of this candle is 29,116.00, and the low is exactly 29,116.00. That’s an Order Block.

ICT: Now we sit and wait to see if we can squeeze any more juice out of this lemon. Any rally that produces twice the size of this little pullback here—watch what I mean. From here to there, see that?

[01:09:11] ICT: That’s the range I’m measuring. Let’s put some lines on it. If price redelivers that same range higher and trades up to here, then the stop would be brought up just below this low.

So if price reaches this level, that’s one full redelivery of the range, and then again up here would be another.

If price trades to that level, the stop needs to be brought up to here. Otherwise, it stays right where it is, at that candlestick’s low. Why am I saying that? This is actually more of an advanced topic, but I thought about doing it and explaining it.

[01:10:08] ICT: So there you go—this is something extra. Price created a high, and now we’re consolidating here. Ideally, I’d like to see continuation. But if price trades up to this level, it’s more likely to produce a deeper retracement afterward, and I wouldn’t want to give back more than that. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take something off during a retracement before it comes back down to this level if price can reach here. Since it made a slightly lower low here, the same idea applies, but this projection has to move higher because it needs to sit on the high of these candlesticks right here.

[01:10:50] ICT: Now I’m just eyeballing it. With this little retracement, if we clear these highs, I want to see price try to reach this level here. Then the stop could move to just below this low. But once price reaches that level, I’d be looking for reasons either to scale something off or close, depending on how price behaves, because it could simply trade up there and start rolling over.

Worst-case scenario would be moving the stop up, price shooting to that level, hitting it, and then the very next candle dropping straight down in one fell swoop.

[01:11:22] ICT: Rare, but it can happen. Very nice, very nice. It’s a little bit—so I said we have two more on. I’m actually going to say we take one off right there,

just before we hit that level. We may not get there; we may fail to reach it entirely, but it’d be nice to get a partial there.

Then, with the single contract remaining, we’ll move the stop from here to just below this low. For the final contract, we’ll try to get out at the low of last Wednesday, August 26th’s First Presented Fair Value Gap.

[01:13:00] ICT: Okay, so we’re looking for a partial just below this line here, which is simply this retracement range projected above. This is an area where price could fail, to be fair.

Obviously, when you’re doing this as a student, you want to have a notepad in hand and write everything down. I was expecting my son to be doing that this morning because he’s being trained with this too. Take all the numbers I’ve called out during this lecture, write them down yourself, and instead of treating the hypothetical position as a mini, treat it as a micro.

[01:14:09] ICT: So every 1 point—for instance, if you’re long from 160 and price moves to 161—that’s $2 per point on a micro, or 50 cents per tick. There are four ticks in every point. So one point is the difference between two whole numbers. For example, if price is trading at 17 and then 18, that’s one handle, or one point. It moved four ticks.

Over time, once you become more comfortable observing the volatility, you can transition to keeping records using a mini. That would be $20 per point, or $5 per tick, with four ticks making one handle or one full-figure move.

We just fell short of our partial on the last two contracts.

[01:15:06] ICT: One would come off if it hits that. We should be hitting our partial in here. We’re just killing it today. We’re just killing it.

All right, so now I’m going to place the stop below that old reference point we used there, and this stop is no longer valid.

[01:16:19] ICT: So if it comes down and stops us out there, we still had a good day. The terminus on our final single contract is going to be right at that level—the low of last Wednesday, August 26th’s First Presented Fair Value Gap.

Okay, remove these lines now. They’re no longer important to me. At this point, all we’re doing is using key levels, watching new PD Arrays form around them, and operating under the narrative that price is more likely to trade higher into the Opening Range Gap between yesterday’s 4:14 p.m. Eastern Time Regular Trading Hours settlement price and today’s 9:30 a.m. opening price.

[01:17:25] ICT: Okay, so all in all, not bad, not bad. I only had one losing transaction in here. Looks like I’m human, which is nice. It’s good. You guys need to see that kind of stuff.

All right, send it. Get up there and touch Wednesday’s First Presented Fair Value Gap. The octant inside of that could be used as your individual draw. I’m just going to do it because I want the video to be shorter. I’m afraid price is going to get up here and spend too much time before it finally gets there.

[01:18:07] ICT: It’s been a slow crawl higher, but it’s definitely going where we were looking for. So it’s more likely to trade into the Opening Range Gap after a trending session transitions into consolidation during the first portion of the morning. Eventually, price can resume and reach into areas where there is no Regular Trading Hours data. Even though we traded at these prices overnight before 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time, it’s more significant when those same prices are booked during Regular Trading Hours. Does that make sense?

[01:18:50] ICT: In other words, whatever we see during Electronic Trading Hours should, by context and confirmation, also be delivered during Regular Trading Hours. Otherwise, it’s simply something that happened overnight during Globex. And then right to the octant. See? Right to the octant. Now be honest, son. Be honest.

[01:19:38] ICT: Say you weren’t my son. Say you weren’t my son and you saw the old man doing this. Would you be inspired to study what I’m teaching? 33 years, pal. Okay, 34 in November. We’re talking about 27. Don’t be kind. Don’t be shortchanging me, boy. Don’t be shortchanging me.

All right, so anyway, I think that’s a good place to close it. Price did a really good job of delivering the way I believed it should. Let me quickly take a screenshot and let these folks know what we were doing here.

ICT: Look at this reaction here. Look at that. Look at that. To me, that’s so sweet. I love seeing that. Anybody else looking at it like this—watch this.

[01:21:19] ICT: Ready? Naked. Notice price is clearing these highs,

but we haven’t reached these highs yet.

Look at that nice, sharp reaction off of this level. Remember, at 9:30 we were already expecting price to go higher, with a minimum objective around 29,212, because that level was shared by the gradient measurements from the daily buy-side imbalance, sell-side inefficiency and the Opening Range Gap. This is the gap right here. See that? It’s easier to see like this. If I start drawing on it again, everything’s going to populate back onto the chart.

[01:22:10] ICT: From this opening price here to where we settled there, halfway is roughly in this area. I wasn’t demanding that price reach the midpoint. I wanted a reasonable objective where the Opening Range Gap Fib levels aligned with a level from the daily buy-side imbalance, sell-side inefficiency. Once you grade both ranges, you’ll see that 29,212 is shared by both key levels. That makes it almost a no-brainer that price is likely to draw up into that area.

[01:22:53] ICT: And you don’t need any kind of order-flow tool or anything that supposedly looks inside the candle. The candle tells you everything. You can read that book by its cover. It’s a one-and-done type of thing. You don’t need to advance the information beyond open, high, low, close, and the time it’s forming. That’s it. Those things will serve you well.

[01:23:18] ICT: All right, son, that’s going to be it. I’ll catch up with you later. I’ll text you shortly when I get this rendered, and we’ll touch base then. I love you. All right, love you.