How New Students Should Start Part 4 \ Pillars Of Daily Log Entries

Date: 2026-09-04

00:18] ICT: Welcome back, folks. Hope you’re doing well. All right, we’re in Part 4 of this week’s series on how new students should start, and we’re dealing with logging key phenomena daily. If you look at my YouTube channel and consider how many videos I have, you might think, “There’s no way I’m getting through all of those anytime soon. In fact, I’ll probably never even try. It’s too much.” I get it. It’s a little intimidating.

[00:58] ICT: One of the things I want to do is bridge that gap for brand-new students, or students contemplating beginning with me as a mentor. I use the futures market. The things I teach work in all markets, but I use this particular market because it allows me to show lots of examples. It’s a regulated market, and it’s not a CFD. There are things I’m going to show you here that will work in the CFD market as well.

[01:33] ICT: You’ll just have to match those things up. As I get into the specific details, I’ll explain what that means. If you’re a Forex trader, or you’re outside the United States studying price action through that medium rather than the U.S. futures market, just know that the things I’m teaching here work in those markets as well.

The first primary thing I want you to understand is that you don’t need everything I teach. In fact, one of the worst things I see is new students coming in and trying to learn as much as possible, as fast as possible. They rush through everything in a short period of time, only to discover that they haven’t actually learned anything.

Six-week logging progression

[02:14] ICT: They’ve wasted time by trying to rush. So I’m going to give you three things to start with. That does not mean you go in every single day looking for all three. For the first one or two weeks, just pick one of them. After two weeks, add another. Study that for another two weeks alongside the first phenomenon. Then, during weeks five and six, add the third one. From there, make it a steady diet of looking for these things and logging them every single day because these phenomena repeat every day.

[02:56] ICT: By recording price action and annotating your charts, you’ll begin to see that these things tend to repeat. They tend to repeat around specific times and in specific ways. You’ll start developing a pattern-recognition mindset, and you’ll condition yourself to look for these things naturally.

That’s the end result of studying them both in the past and going forward. You build an understanding of what they’ve done across many prior sessions, while continuing to study them in real time. That gives you the best of both worlds for training your eye, learning to seek the pattern, and recognizing the regime behind each characteristic I’m going to cover.

[03:51] ICT: There’s a method being employed all the time, but you’re not going to fully understand it until you’ve seen it multiple times. If you don’t want to do these things, I promise you this: you will not become consistent. You’ll jump from one thing to the next, convincing yourself that you’ll do better with something else in my library, and that’s not true.

Start with something simple. In my opinion, these are the three pillars to start with as a Smart Money Concept student using my concepts. You’re going to stop staring blankly at the chart and instead know exactly what you’re going in to study every day.

[04:37] ICT: Every single day, you’re going to study these three primary pillars. They’re simple. They’re not complex, and the market can’t hide them from you. That’s the power of this.

If you came into this hearing people say my concepts are complicated or unnecessarily overcomplicated, that’s meant to discourage you and steer you away from them. Give this six weeks—two weeks for each one.

[05:17] ICT: If you’re more advanced and you’ve been under my tutelage for a while but still haven’t found your groove, you don’t necessarily need to spend six weeks doing them in separate two-week intervals. You can study all three simultaneously because you already understand what you’re trying to do. But you probably skipped this part of the growth process, and it’s essential.

The first one I’m going to talk about is the Pre-Market Hours Phase and its Relative Equal Lows and Relative Equal Highs.

Pre-market range and liquidity

[05:52] ICT: By having a very specific focus on a specific time of day, every single trading day—with the exception of Sundays—you have a Pre-Market Session from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. So annotate your chart with two vertical lines: one at 7:00 a.m. and one at 9:00 a.m. Then, inside those two lines, identify the highest high and lowest low formed during that two-hour window.

[06:44] ICT: Once you have that range encapsulated, highlight it so that when you take screenshots—and that’s the whole premise of what I’m teaching here—you have a clear visual record. You want three screenshots per day based on the things I’m going to cover today. That’s simple. It doesn’t take much time. If you can’t commit to doing that, you’re not going to be able to consistently follow trading rules or a model either. This is how you get better at reading price action.

[07:18] ICT: The goal is to anticipate rather than react. That’s what leads to a higher degree of precision in tape reading: where is the market likely to go next, and how is it likely to get there?

Inside that 7:00 to 9:00 window, study whether price is trending, consolidating, or reversing. To make it even simpler, reduce it to two possibilities: is it trending, or is it not trending? If you’re completely new, strip it down further to trending versus consolidating.

[08:05] ICT: An example of consolidation is what price is doing here—just moving sideways. Here, price started from a low and moved all the way up to a high. That’s trending.

If you study the very first video in my 2016 Paid Mentorship playlist, I teach the four conditions of price delivery: expansion, reversal, consolidation, and retracement. That’s a little more advanced, though, and you don’t need it for this exercise.

[08:44] ICT: What I want you to do is keep it simple: is price moving in a small range, or is it trending? It can trend higher like it does here, or trend lower. Either way, it’s a trend.

If it’s consolidating, that’s important because it gives you an expectation for the type of behavior you may see after 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time, when Regular Trading Hours opens. You want to record what that market looks like. You also want to annotate any relative equal lows, like we have here.

[09:25] ICT: This low is relatively equal to that one. You also want to record the highest high and lowest low formed between 7:00 and 9:00 a.m.

So now you’ve identified specific liquidity pools inside that two-hour window. How hard is that? It’s not complex. You’re simply determining whether price is range-bound/consolidating or expanding/trending, while marking the obvious liquidity pools.

If it’s doing these kinds of things, then you’re going to expect consolidation.

[10:07] ICT: Here we have it. Price trended between 7:00 and 9:00. At 9:30, we had a little bit of expansion, but then what happened for the rest of the day? Consolidation. So that 7:00 to 9:00 window acts like a precursor—almost like the proverbial crystal ball—helping you determine the strong likelihood of how price is going to book after 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time. Is it going to expand? Is it going to trend? Or is it going to chop around and move sideways for a while?

Tracking liquidity-pool reactions

[10:37] ICT: You get those clues from what the market does between 7:00 and 9:00. It’s not a panacea and it won’t work every single time, but that’s why you log it every day. Annotate what you observe, including any relative equal lows, and then record whether those lows were traded to.

Here, price used them, swept below them, and then rallied higher. If you simply looked at price trading below those relative equal lows and then aimed for the opposite end of the 7:00–9:00 range, targeting that high, that’s a bread-and-butter setup.

[11:17] ICT: Very, very easy. Once price hits that objective—right here—you’re done for the day. Go do something else. Then come back after the market closes and study past price moves. This is the first pillar. It’s not complex. I do this every single day myself, and this November I’ll have been trading for 34 years. I still do it all the time.

I don’t take screenshots because I don’t journal electronically. I write down the actual numbers for the high and low, and I record the condition or phase the market was in—was it in trending expansion or consolidation?

[11:58] ICT: Then I record the raw numbers for any relative equal lows or relative equal highs, the highest high, the lowest low, and where price referred back to those specific price points. I also record the time when it happened. In this example, that would be right here.

So you would annotate that time. How much time elapsed after 9:30 before price reacted from a key level determined by those liquidity pools—the relative equal lows, relative equal highs, highest high, or lowest low?

[12:32] ICT: It’s a very, very simple process. You’re no longer staring at all of this price action trying to determine, “What’s the most important high? Which liquidity pool am I supposed to be looking at?” See how it strips away all that ambiguity?

The second pillar in understanding what a new student should be logging—and remember, this is not backtesting—is still simply about taking screenshots of things you want to study. Once you’ve built a large sample set of these observations, the next video will show you how to backtest and work with that information, so you understand what you’re supposed to be seeing rather than simply taking pictures of it.

RTH gap midpoint delivery

[13:16] ICT: The second pillar is the Regular Trading Hours Opening Range Gap and its Consequent Encroachment delivery. If you’re brand new, that probably sounds like a whole lot of mumbo jumbo. I understand. On TradingView, load up a 1-minute chart—it has to be 1 minute—and look in the lower-right corner. It may say ETH, which means Electronic Trading Hours. Click it and select RTH, Regular Trading Hours.

[13:55] ICT: Once you’re toggled to Regular Trading Hours, you’re looking for the range between the previous day’s final print at 4:14 p.m. Eastern Time—the closing price of that 1-minute candle—and the 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time opening price of the new trading day. That 9:30 price marks the beginning of Regular Trading Hours.

[14:31] ICT: Once you have those two prices, simply draw a rectangle over that range like I’m doing here. On TradingView, I keep the rectangle tool in my favorites, and I have it configured to always display the midpoint. That’s an option in the rectangle settings. Always include it so you immediately know the middle of the Regular Trading Hours Opening Range Gap.

That midpoint is the Consequent Encroachment.

[15:04] ICT: The difference between where we stopped trading at 4:14 p.m. Eastern Time and where we start trading at 9:30 a.m. the following day is your Regular Trading Hours Opening Range Gap. By having the rectangle split that range in half—which is an option in the rectangle tool—you can immediately identify the RTH Opening Range Gap Consequent Encroachment, or CE. That’s simply a fancy name for the midpoint of the range or inefficiency.

[15:42] ICT: You want to study this segment of price action and observe how price trades back to half of the gap. Here it does it almost immediately. On the second minute after 9:30, at 9:31, price opens and trades right down to it. Keep track of how long it takes the market to reach half of its gap. You’re going to find there’s roughly a 70% likelihood that it reaches Consequent Encroachment by 10:00 a.m. Don’t hold me to that number. Don’t hold me to it.

[16:15] ICT: I want you to follow it every single day and keep records. At the end of the year, calculate the statistical probability of it occurring over the previous year. You’ll see that there’s a recurring phenomenon you can potentially take advantage of.

What does that mean? If you’re looking for lower prices here, you can simply use that Consequent Encroachment as your target, then once you learn what they are, use a Fair Value Gap or Bearish Order Block for the entry and target that level.

[16:47] ICT: And you don’t have to do anything else. You don’t have to look for a complete closure of the Regular Trading Hours Opening Range Gap. You’re simply logging screenshots. But don’t just take pictures like I’m showing you here. Zoom and center the chart so you leave enough empty space to write down the information and observations that matter to you.

You might write something like, “This is the third time this week that price reached the RTH Opening Range Gap Consequent Encroachment by 10:00 a.m., and it gave me an opportunity to identify a short from a bearish PD Array up here, perhaps an Inversion Fair Value Gap.”

[17:34] ICT: Then price sells off into the Consequent Encroachment of the RTH Opening Range Gap. All right, now the final and third one. See how painless this is? Very, very simple. Don’t overcomplicate it by overthinking what I’m explaining. Just start doing it.

Then, on Saturday or Sunday while the market isn’t trading, go back through your screenshots. You may notice things you missed while taking the screenshots, annotating them, and writing down your observations. Give yourself time to study when the market isn’t booking price in real time.

First 10 AM fair value gap

[18:13] ICT: When the market is static, it’s important to look for details you may have missed. Over time, you’ll begin seeing more detail than you did during the first few months. Eventually, you’ll develop a pattern-recognition mindset where, while watching real-time price action, you can almost see what it’s trying to do before it does it.

The third pillar is the Silver Bullet First Presented Fair Value Gap after 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

[18:48] ICT: If you don’t know what that is, it’s very simple. We’re focusing on 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Beginning at that minute marker, the 10:00 candle itself can form the Fair Value Gap. I’m giving you streamlined rules here.

As soon as that 10:00 a.m. candle closes on the 1-minute chart, determine whether there’s a Fair Value Gap on that candle or on the candles immediately following it.

[19:31] ICT: The first Fair Value Gap that forms inside the 10:00 hour is the one you’re going to focus on. Here we have 10:00 a.m., and on the very next candle at 10:01, we have a sell-side imbalance, buy-side inefficiency. There’s a small gap there. Because there’s also a Volume Imbalance, you have to account for it. When the bodies don’t meet on candles forming a potential Fair Value Gap, include that area. Draw it down like this and extend it to the right.

[20:09] ICT: You can configure your rectangle to automatically extend to the right, or simply drag it out manually. In the beginning, I want you to use Extend Right. Then, when you’re annotating the completed example, turn the extension off and terminate the box at the first time price returns to it, like it does here. Price creates the Fair Value Gap, trades lower again after 10:00, and forms a short-term low here.

[20:36] ICT: See that? Then price rallies back up into the Fair Value Gap and subsequently trades from that area down below this low, where sell-side liquidity would exist. That’s the setup you’re training your eye to recognize—a very small, simple fluctuation in price action that tends to repeat every single day.

Once you become comfortable recognizing things that repeat every day, you’ll be far less inclined to chase things you don’t understand. You’ll stick to the things you understand.

[21:12] ICT: By looking at this, you have a complete model. It tells you what time it’s going to form, how it’s likely to form, and then all you have to determine is which high or low it may be aiming for. In this example, price came down from this high, rallied back up, broke these lows and these lows here, and then traded right back up. In the beginning, you’re not trying to prove that you’re right about the move from here to here.

[21:43] ICT: You’re recording it after the fact. Eventually you’ll get to the point where you can see these things forming in real time and know whether price is likely reaching for sell side or buy side. But in the beginning, for at least four to six weeks, submit yourself to the process. Do it every single day.

By recording what has already happened, you’re essentially storing a picture of something you’ve never seen before. If you study that same phenomenon every day in slightly different forms, with small subtleties but the same general structure, your understanding of the principle will improve dramatically.

[22:25] ICT: That experience is something I can’t give you as a student. You have to earn it. By going through price action and looking for things that repeat day by day, you’ll realize there is no reason to chase price and no reason to jump from system to system. You don’t need to consume every video in my library immediately. You can take your time and build your understanding around these three primary pillars of Smart Money Concepts. It’s highly visual.

[22:59] ICT: It isn’t going to hide from you. Everything is time-based, so you’re not staring at random afternoon price action. You’re not looking at Asia or London. If you’re brand new, I don’t care if those are eventually the sessions you want to trade. Do this first. Everything you’re learning here can later be transposed to any time frame or any session you want to trade.

But do the work this way. Spend time doing this every single day. Record the exact time the Fair Value Gap formed.

Measuring the return setup

[23:32] ICT: In this example, it formed at 10:01 a.m. Eastern Time. Then record how many minutes it took before price came back into it and offered the setup to sell off and take out the short-term low that formed after the Fair Value Gap.

Measure the range from the return into the Fair Value Gap down to that low. How many handles was it? Determine the highest high and lowest low of that move. That’s your total range.

[24:10] ICT: That’s the number of handles price moved. You want to see this every single day. Condition yourself to do it. Treat it almost like a ritual or an exercise in meditation. Put on some calming music and go through the process.

What you’re doing is training yourself to recognize something you would’ve completely ignored before. Nobody else is going to show you these things outside of our community.

[24:43] ICT: Well, that’s not entirely true. There are plenty of mentors out there copying me. But doing this will serve you better than paying for a mentor. I promise you. You don’t have to pay me. I just gave it to you for free.

Do these things over and over again every day. Go back through what we’ve created today, but also go back six weeks into old data and do the same exercise. At the same time, walk forward every single day for the next six weeks.

[25:14] ICT: At the end, you’ll have 12 weeks of data. You’ll have six weeks of historical study and six weeks of forward observation. Use one market: NASDAQ. Just one market. I don’t care if you ultimately don’t want to trade NASDAQ. Use it because it’ll make it easier for me to reference things and for you to follow along.

Then, when I talk about NASDAQ, things will start resonating more because you’ll be in tune with that market.

[25:45] ICT: You’ll have seen it do certain things over and over again. What you’ve accomplished is a measure of understanding and experience that you cannot buy. And it’ll prove to you that these phenomena repeat. Just because you can’t recognize them in real time today doesn’t mean you won’t recognize them six weeks from now.

That’s going to be it for this one. Short and sweet. Hopefully you found it insightful. Don’t dismiss it because it looks too easy. The benefit comes from actually doing the work, not from simply Netflix-and-chilling your way through ICT videos.

[26:23] ICT: This isn’t one of those videos. This is you rolling up your sleeves and spending about 20 minutes a day. That’s all it should take to do all three. How much time you spend going back through six weeks of historical data is up to you.

But going forward, starting next Tuesday—because Monday is Labor Day in the United States—Tuesday will be Day 1. That’s when you begin logging these screenshots and observations every single day.

[26:58] ICT: Take your time with the screenshots. Make sure everything is centered properly, from the highest high to the lowest low, so the entire idea is center stage. Leave enough space around the chart for annotations and observations.

Take it seriously. Pretend I’m your professor and I grade you on neatness and organization, because I would. The more diligent you are about being organized, concise, and precise with your screenshots and observations, the better.

[27:40] ICT: It’s a sign of character. If you’re treating this seriously as a business you’re building, you’ll spend a little extra time with it. Ten years from now, you’ll be able to go back through these journal entries and appreciate how diligent you were when you first started.

You’ll read your annotations and remember the day.

[28:09] ICT: It’s like a little time machine. You’ll say, “I remember that day. I remember when I finally understood the Fair Value Gap that forms during New York hours and how it delivers toward a short-term high or low for buy-side or sell-side liquidity.” You’ll be able to relive that moment simply by reading your notes.

How you store all of this is up to you. For those of you already backtesting and journaling electronically, I actually recommend it because you have a benefit I don’t.

Organizing searchable journal entries

[28:47] ICT: I can’t go back through hundreds of leather journals and instantly know what page I talked about something on or how many times I referenced it. I don’t have that ability, and I actually envy you for that.

Electronic journaling lets you use keywords, dates, and topic searches. You could tag something as Silver Bullet Log — 10 AM. For the first pillar, you might use Pre-Market Session Condition or Phase and Pre-Market Liquidity Pools.

[29:30] ICT:* The second pillar would be Regular Trading Hours Opening Range Gap — Consequent Encroachment Delivery.*

I promise you, by doing this simple exercise, you’re going to learn more about price action than you will by endlessly going through video after video trying to learn new concepts. Pick one of these and start. Then gradually work toward doing all three and make this a primary daily function.

I promise you, I absolutely guarantee you, your ability to read price will improve dramatically. You won’t have the same fear of missing something or not knowing what you’re supposed to be looking for.

[30:12] ICT: You’ll know what you’re doing. It’s simple, but you have to put the time into it.

Hopefully you found this insightful. Until I talk to you next time, be safe.