ICT Mentorship Core Content - Month 1 - What To Focus On Right Now

Summary

Highlights

• New traders hold an advantage in the ICT mentorship by starting fresh without retail-trading habits! 🎉
• Central to the mentorship is grasping the smart money versus uninformed money dynamic. 💡
• Creating daily price action logs is a key step that boosts your trading perspective! 📈
• The mentorship teaches why relying on indicators can hinder your trading journey. 🚫📊
• Understand liquidity and market efficiency as priorities to master trading strategies! 💧
• Gain insights into the role of central banks and how they set currency value! 💵

Key Takeaways

• New traders have an advantage as they begin with a clean slate, free from retail trading habits. 🎉
• Develop a smart money mindset by understanding liquidity provision and market efficiency. 💼
• Focus on daily price action logs instead of relying on indicators for a robust trading foundation. 📈

Overview

Chapters

• 00:30 - 01:30: Introduction to the Mentorship Program The chapter introduces the structure and objectives of the mentorship program. It outlines the roles and responsibilities of both mentors and mentees, including expectations for communication and goal setting. The importance of establishing a positive mentor-mentee relationship is emphasized, along with an overview of the resources available to support the program. Key milestones and the evaluation process are also discussed, setting the foundation for a successful mentorship experience.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Challenges for Experienced Traders The chapter discusses mindset strategies for experienced traders, focusing on approaching the marketplace with a reversed perspective compared to traditional retail methods. It emphasizes the psychological aspects necessary for trading.
• 02:30 - 04:00: Concept of Smart Money vs Uninformed Money This chapter explores the concept of 'smart money' versus 'uninformed money'. It highlights that newcomers to trading may have an advantage over experienced traders who may need to unlearn bad habits or misunderstandings they have developed over time. The teaching is intended to challenge existing beliefs and encourage a reevaluation of strategies, although it may be costly for seasoned traders to let go of their current practices.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Smart Money's Perspective The chapter titled 'Smart Money's Perspective' discusses the importance of understanding the perspective and psychology of informed or 'smart' money in the marketplace. The speaker mentions using a visual tool for months to educate others and emphasizes the necessity of grasping how traders should interpret market data and reverse psychology. A key point is that the psychology of informed money is often opposite to that of the general market participants.
• 05:00 - 06:30: Price Movements and Indicators The chapter titled 'Price Movements and Indicators' discusses the concept of 'uninformed' or 'speculative' money, often referred to as 'dumb money,' in the context of financial markets. It emphasizes the idea that in every market scenario, there is usually a 'victim' in financial transactions, akin to a crime. The chapter explores the perspective of those who engage in speculative trading, highlighting their refusal to acknowledge the existence of 'smart money,'—entities or individuals with more information or insight. This refusal can lead to potential financial pitfalls for speculative traders who underestimate the influence or the very existence of such informed participants in the market.
• 06:30 - 08:30: Introduction to Market Efficiency Paradigm This chapter introduces the concept of Market Efficiency Paradigm. It discusses viewpoints on the perception of market manipulation and its impact on price delivery. The chapter contrasts the views of uninformed individuals, who often rely on indicators, with the understanding of 'smart money' players who are more knowledgeable about market operations. It highlights the divergence in perspectives between uninformed traders and those with deeper market insights.
• 08:30 - 10:30: Role of Central Banks and Market Makers The chapter discusses the influence of price movement indicators, such as 'overbought' or 'oversold' signals, on market trends. The speaker reflects on their own experience, having previously subscribed to the belief that these indicators determine whether markets rise or fall. They describe this mindset as something they adhered to for many years before eventually departing from it. The chapter provides insights for new traders who have not yet been affected by an over-reliance on market indicators.
• 10:30 - 14:00: Introduction to Price Drivers The chapter titled 'Introduction to Price Drivers' discusses the pitfalls of relying on traditional indicators for trading. The speaker emphasizes the importance of moving away from indicator-based strategies to better understand smart money movements. The use of indicators is framed as a tool to understand the mindset of less informed traders, setting the stage for a deeper dive into market sentiment in the following month.
• 14:00 - 16:00: Importance of Starting Anew The chapter 'Importance of Starting Anew' seems to explore the notion of reevaluating one's approach towards the marketplace, focusing on the perspective of 'smart money'. It emphasizes the significance of distancing oneself from the 'speculative uninformed monies' and avoiding aligning with the so-called losing crowd in the marketplace. The transcript suggests a starting point by understanding and adopting the perspective of informed and strategic financial stakeholders.
• 16:00 - 18:00: Creating Daily Price Action Logs The chapter discusses the influx of a large amount of liquidity entering the financial markets daily, despite the existence of many failed trading accounts. It highlights the statistic that 90% of traders lose money, indicating that success in trading and fund management is not guaranteed. The text emphasizes that even large funds are not necessarily profitable, and a fund's popularity does not assure its longevity.
• 18:00 - 21:00: Chart Timeframes and Data Requirements The chapter "Chart Timeframes and Data Requirements" discusses the perspective of informed traders, particularly focusing on how they view the marketplace through the lens of liquidity providers, or what's known as smart money. Smart money is characterized by its role of providing liquidity in the market, usually engaging in trades with the expectation of returning to them to either offset or adjust their positions. The chapter highlights that this informed perspective is crucial for understanding market dynamics, especially in contrast to uninformed money, which is a driving force in the marketplace. The smart money's strategy involves conducting trades at an exchange premium, which is fundamental to their liquidity provision approach.
• 21:00 - 24:00: Identifying Significant Market Levels This chapter delves into the concept of significant market levels, emphasizing the role of 'smart money' in the financial markets. It contrasts the informed perspective of smart money with the uninformed outlook of the general market participants. The discussion highlights how smart money operates with a strategic viewpoint, aware of the presence and actions of uninformed investors who lack a sophisticated understanding of market dynamics.
• 24:00 - 28:00: Review and Importance of Documenting Price Action The chapter discusses the concept of 'smart money' in the marketplace. It explains how large firms or banks might trade against each other, which contradicts the concept of a free market. The smart money perspective utilizes the actions of these entities as liquidity, and price movements are engineered to ensure efficiency specifically for these smart money entities. The chapter highlights that this perspective revolves around using others' activities for liquidity purposes, focusing on the efficiency of smart money entities, rather than external factors.

ICT Mentorship Core Content - Month 1 - What To Focus On Right Now Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30
• 00:30 - 01:00 okay folks welcome back this is the third teaching of a series of eight for the first month of the ict mentorship okay we're going to continue continuing on our theme of understanding the mindset that you have to have going into the marketplace looking at things in a little bit reverse order then you're normally taught from a retail perspective and this is one
• 01:00 - 01:30 this is one of those teachings that you're going to have that if you're new you actually have the advantage here for folks that have been trading for a while that have adopted bad habits or an understanding or a belief that they have an understanding it's going to be a little bit expensive for them because they're going to have to purge some of the things that they either subscribe to or wrestle with it until they either do or elect not to use this insight at all
• 01:30 - 02:00 i mapped out a a crude depiction here and i've been using it for months actually um as a teaching tool but we're gonna really hammer it down in this mentorship because it's imperative that you know how we as traders are supposed to be viewing marketplace uh data delivery um reverse psychology whatever the psychology of this informed money is it's going to be diametrically opposed
• 02:00 - 02:30 to that of the uninformed or speculative money or quote unquote dumb and when we have these ideas when we look at price okay the first thing we have to do is establish who is the victim here you know generally there's a victim always in every crime and the perspective that the speculative uninformed money has is that number one they don't acknowledge that there's a smart money there is not an entity out there that
• 02:30 - 03:00 has uh quote unquote the right things always on uh the right perspective or that a market is rigged or controlled or manipulated or has any influence over long-term price delivery the uninformed money okay or those that are uninformed in regards to how smart money actually operates and exists in the in the marketplace their actual perspective really is that indicators are the answer and uninformed money their perspective
• 03:00 - 03:30 holds belief that price moves by indicators influence okay and the influence of an indicator being overbought or sold that is what the precursor is to a market moving higher or lower and i can tell you i subscribed to that for years as a new trader and it took a long time for me to actually be broken away from that type of mindset so if you're new and you haven't been exposed to indicator itis and you're not
• 03:30 - 04:00 infected with that yet you're actually pretty good uh in in terms of advantage uh those that like to use it indicators are going to have a little bit of a struggle with this mentorship because i'm telling you basically you need to get that out of your system get that off your charts because it is not how you're going to be able to see smart money in fact we're going to be able to use these indicators to be uh informed as to what the uninformed traders are actually uh thinking so when we talk about sentiment next month you'll have a lot more understanding about what that is how it's developed
• 04:00 - 04:30 and what you can do with it now obviously we only exposed one side of the the paradigm here by specifically dealing with the speculative uninformed monies perspective uh you're not here to really so much learn about those individuals because obviously no we all know that there's a losing crowd in the marketplace and your idea of uh you know being a part of that group is foolish so we're here only to focus on what the smart money view is on the marketplace and that begins by
• 04:30 - 05:00 understanding that there is a huge vast enormous new pool of liquidity coming into the marketplace every single day even though there's new busted accounts all the time the statistics stated tell us that 90 of traders lose their money large funds are in the same category not every fund is profitable just because there's a lot of people that are investing money into this fund or this fund manager does not no way guarantee that that fund will exist a year two years five years from now
• 05:00 - 05:30 so we as informed traders our perspective is to hold the perspective of what a liquidity provider or smart money view is on the marketplace and they put a spotlight on the aspects of uninformed money because that's what makes the world go around in the marketplace the smart money is there to provide liquidity but they're doing it at a exchange premium in other words they're putting in in trades that they're gonna most likely come back to to either offset or
• 05:30 - 06:00 neutralize for their interests and we'll talk more about that as we go but for now understand that the smart money knows in fact that there is a large body of uninformed money out there contrast that with what we spoke of concerning the uninformed money's perspective is there's a lack of an entity out there that has a smart money perspective on the price they don't have an opinion or an idea based uh perspective that there is someone or some entity or entities out there that
• 06:00 - 06:30 have a smart money perspective or that the banks would actually you know trade against large uh firms or funds that that goes against the grain of what a free market is so when we have a smart money perspective in the marketplace we actually use their perspective as everybody else is liquidity and price is delivered to engineer efficiency for the smart money entities only it's not anything outside that
• 06:30 - 07:00 so to hold the perspective of a liquidity provider you are adopting a smart money perspective and everybody else is liquidity and the liquidity is going to be in the form of buy stops sell stops pending orders above and below the market highs that are most recently formed on your charts once we understand that there's two distinct perspectives that's what creates the market efficiency paradigm both of
• 07:00 - 07:30 both groups okay have their individual perspectives the one that is smart money they have the unique perspective of understanding already what the uninformed money is going to believe about the marketplace and that gives them their edge on top of that they're actually in control of price just like anything else if you own a storefront or if you're owning a business and your commodity is sold who sets the price for that commodity you you're the store owner well currency is owned by the bank and they set the price
• 07:30 - 08:00 on the value of that bank note or that digit on your screen that says you have xyz number of dollars in or francs or pounds or whatever it is that you're uh you measuring your currency in that's east that value is set by the central bank that has printed that money and why this is such a uh speed bump for people's understanding is beyond me because if you look at the state of the world we're in right now obviously corruption and deceit is the name of the game so
• 08:00 - 08:30 it's not a shock to hear if you first time being exposed to this that the central banks are in absolute control of what their price of their currency is and they can set it at any time at any price they want don't believe me look at what they did with the swiss franc and the euro when it was d-pegged instantaneous wipeout okay so once we understand both perspectives okay intimately okay we no longer have a at odds perspective on the marketplace we don't vilify the market maker we don't vilify
• 08:30 - 09:00 smart money we don't beat up or make fun of the uninformed money in fact what we do is we find a balance in between that and we don't think in terms of victim or aggressor we just think in terms of efficiency because the markets are always going to trade in an efficient manner but it's slanted and more prone to lace the pockets of the smart money because they have the advantage of pricing wherever they want price to go to and they already know what the perspective is of the uninformed money
• 09:00 - 09:30 and they also know how to manipulate that perspective at any given time based on chart patterns based on indicators based on just reactions to market news now as we go through this mentorship we're going to be focusing primarily on your understanding of these four primary drivers in price delivery it's retracement expansion reversal and consolidation now we're not going to talk specifically about that but i want you to understand that all the things we're teaching here they're all frameworks for you to understand those
• 09:30 - 10:00 four general principles we can't teach specific contexts or topics without having a broad based understanding of foundation and that's what this entire month of september is doing it brings everybody to a reference point to start at the same location some of you that are advanced that watch a lot of my free tutorials over the years you need to put that aside for a moment and start with this perspective in mind and i promise you it's going to deliver everything that you skipped over we're
• 10:00 - 10:30 going to fill in all those gaps but understanding that the interbank price delivery algorithm okay to understand that it's going to have to come by exposure and exposure creates experience that experience is going to give you the understanding going into the charts seeing what they ex what they should be doing with price what you should be seeing in price by seeing each individual component
• 10:30 - 11:00 explained in detail and context each individual part or component of the hole will be able to dovetail nicely and you'll understand how everything fits together but suppress that desire to feel like you have to have techniques and and patterns and intricate secrets about how the chart does this or chart does that you have to have the framework in mind and the foundation of why these things exist otherwise all those little things ain't going to make any sense to you when i'm calling on you to refer to them
• 11:00 - 11:30 so with all that what specifically should you be focusing on right now as a new student in this mentorship the first thing you need to know is there are very little things you should be bringing into your expectations and what your understanding should be in other words basically what i'm saying is you need to have no previous knowledge brought in with this kind of like put everything aside and
• 11:30 - 12:00 assume it's very difficult for those who have already gone through different disciplines of trading because they have to try to forget what they already know and even if they've made money with it which is the worst thing that could have ever happened is if anything outside of institutional order flow led to your profitability it really was just coincidence and coincidence can happen for a long time i did it for nine months and was all pure luck and then it no longer worked again so understanding right now what it is specifically you're supposed to be doing
• 12:00 - 12:30 that's important as a new mentor student the first thing you need to be doing is creating a daily price action log with price charts now i know some of you don't want to do this some of you have resisted me uh telling you for years to do this but i'm telling you you all are here and you've paid for this mentorship you paid for the understanding and expecting experience that i've gained over the last 23 plus years i can tell you how i got it was doing the very things i'm going to tell you to do in this specific video it starts here if you
• 12:30 - 13:00 skip this video if you skip what i'm teaching you in this video if you ignore what i'm telling you what to do in regards to what specific things you should start with right now it does not mean okay just because you've been trading longer than anybody else and because you have i understand what optimal trade entry is because you understand what an order block bullish embarrasses before because you understand what a liquidity void is that is not an advantage okay you need to go back to square one and understand that this is strength in your development if
• 13:00 - 13:30 you don't do these types of things you're actually going to hurt your development you're going to hurt and stunt your growth throughout this mentorship so go back to square one you're the new student do everything that's been described here and advise because this is where the money starts coming in if you have these things in place and you start right at this very core principle it will develop we're going to be focusing on this throughout the entire 12 months every month we're going to build on what rules and what things that
• 13:30 - 14:00 you're supposed to be looking for in the charts but for right now primarily the only thing i want you to be doing is starting with a daily chart okay your daily chart needs to show 12 months no less than nine months view you have to have that much perspective on your chart don't have so much of a perspective you have multiple years on your chart 12 months to nine months ideally okay you have a four hour chart and your four hour chart needs to have three months of price action viewed
• 14:00 - 14:30 the 60 minute chart or one hour chart has to have at least three weeks view and the 15 minute chart needs to have at least three to four days view that means for every chart here i'm recommending a specific amount of data that needs to be displayed for that respective time frame what you need to resist doing right now is you need to resist the urge to forecast price movements that's not for your stage of development right now do not try to rush ahead and try to
• 14:30 - 15:00 figure out what the market's going to do next because that's going to be a problem for you and it's only going to lead to frustration we will get you there and it's going to happen in due time but for now resist that urge but there are some things you need to be specifically dealing with these charts you need to note where price shown a quick movement from a specific level in other words if it's run quickly higher or lower from a particular level that's noteworthy you need to note that on your chart you need to also note recent highs and lows that haven't been retested that means if a
• 15:00 - 15:30 high's formed on your chart if the price has not come back up to that level in recent time okay you need to make a special note of that because it's going to probably be influential going in the future vice versa just contrarily speaking you're going to be able to look for the lows that have formed that have not been recently traded to and that low will be influential later on in future price delivery as well note areas on the charts where price has left clean highs and clean lows basically that looks like two equal highs that formed in
• 15:30 - 16:00 close proximity to one another um when we whenever we see a high go up and form and then it trades away from that for a little while and comes right back to it and doesn't make a new high or maybe it falls just a little bit shorter just a little bit above it i note that as a clean high and usually buy stops will form above that and the market will usually come back up there and run through that it doesn't mean it won't continue through it but it's usually a big bullseye for a price to want to go up into that area and the reverse is said
• 16:00 - 16:30 for double bottoms or equal lows when a low is formed and another low is equally formed in close proximity to the initial one that's a big area for sell stops to pull or build up underneath those lows and the market tends to have a willingness to go down there and test that liquidity that means the market will go down into that area whether it continues to go lower or if it goes down and then reverses there's conditions that we look for to frame all that and you will know when to expect the specific conditions but for now i want you to start
• 16:30 - 17:00 practicing looking for that in your charts and having them noted on your chart note what days the highs and the lows form and this is for the weekly range and you want to know what time of day that occurs what kill zone is it the high and low of the week forming in london or is it forming in new york because all those things are going to lend well to prognostication and what should happen going forward and you want to note the daily high and the daily low every single trading day
• 17:00 - 17:30 and you want to note when the daily high and the daily low forms for every individual uh trading day now what does that look like well it starts off with a bare bones chart this is a daily chart and i'm using the swiss franc here it could be any chart any pair but you want to start with one currency pair and then it's mentorship you want to specifically deal with one i would recommend you doing something apart from the british pound and the euro only because you're going to see me specifically dealing with that in this individual mentorship but you
• 17:30 - 18:00 want to be doing something with a currency pair that is not being utilized in this mentorship that way you're getting a unique perspective that you yourself have arrived at using this as a guideline but the first thing you want to do is obviously note the most recent highs in the recent lows where markets have shown a willingness to repel from that's the first thing you want to note because this is how you identify order blocks this is how you identify liquidity voids this is all the beginning frameworks of that but you need to be able to note those recent highs and recent lows
• 18:00 - 18:30 that's what's been done for you here next you're going to drop down into a four hour chart and those same levels of this noted on the daily chart are shown here and there's more highs and more lows that come into visibility by doing a lower time frame perspective we went from again the chart was a daily chart before now we're looking at the same levels just drop down into a four-hour chart those levels will be transposed immediately to what the four-hour chart shows then you
• 18:30 - 19:00 go through doing the same thing you're looking for areas where it's too clean equal highs and equal lows and close proximity to one another and you look for where the market has moved quickly away from a particular level when it creates these real big candles or bars okay on your chart you want to note that because they're going to be influential in your expectations of where price should go and where they should not go you're going to go down to an hourly chart okay an hourly chart you're going to be looking at individual days okay over a course of one or two
• 19:00 - 19:30 weeks and you can get the weekly range defined with the hourly chart and you can look at the intraday highs and lows with an hour already charge a really good bellwether chart if you're a short-term trader or a day trader that's like the daily chart for uh you know the barometer whether you should be a buyer or seller and we'll teach all those things all those instant details will be taught in this mentorship for now you'll be taking all those levels you found on the daily chart the four hour and transposing those to an hourly chart now you want to keep this chart
• 19:30 - 20:00 okay in this format separate from all the other charts that i'm going to talk about now okay anything else we talk about in terms of what we're specifically looking for they don't get utilized on the same chart you create another chart so you're going to have two individual independent us swissy charts okay but you're going to carry the information on two separate charts that way you don't have charts that are too busy have too many things on there and you get confused and all kinds of things that we're worrying about then you'll kind of create another swiss
• 20:00 - 20:30 franc chart okay and for that you're going to use a 15-minute chart and when it's loaded obviously it's going to be naked bare nothing on there and the 15-minute chart looks like a lot of noise it doesn't give you any perspective without any frames of reference and you want to take the course of action we talked about using the daily the four hour in one hour chart do that same thing with the individual 15 minute chart but you only need to be applying it to the last 15 i'm sorry last three days three to four days and using
• 20:30 - 21:00 those reference points in the last three to four days on a 15-minute chart okay you're gonna be looking at also the daily highs and the daily lows and you can see this is how i do my charts on a 15-minute basis you're actually going to see me actually do this very practice every single day going forward starting with this week that we're going to enter into the mentorship i note the previous days highs in the previous days lows and then draw them out to where zero gmt is which is eight o'clock in that evening time in my time
• 21:00 - 21:30 frame and in this delivery of data with this platform this is how i know my daily highs and daily lows it's important to note also the days of the week now i'm not going to give you all the specifics here because you're actually going to be watching me do it on a day-to-day basis so you'll be able to get a rough idea in this tutorial but more specifically you can actually see me actually creating documents for my individual record keeping so you're going to see actually how i do my charts how i log them and yes even after 23 years of
• 21:30 - 22:00 trading i still do this it's important to do it it's understanding it's clarity it gives you perspective and it's what professionals do sorry it's just there's no way around it the folks that are really concerned about the market they have logs they keep journals these are the types of things they do if you notice real quick why noting the previous day's highs in previous days lows if you look at wednesday's data okay you see the little delineation where it says wednesday if you look at the previous day obviously it would be tuesday in the course of a
• 22:00 - 22:30 normal week the high that was formed on tuesday on wednesday price came right up there and ran through that around the 97 90 level uh notice it did not continue through that it just went up through the previous days or tuesday's high then it sold off when it sold off it went all the way down where did it go down to just any old level it went down to tuesday's low just breaching it by a pip or two and then came back off into consolidation then look at what happened on thursday
• 22:30 - 23:00 thursday we had price retraced back into the range that was created from wednesday's high down into wednesday's low thursday starts today with trading and consolidation it rallies up closes in a range okay that was formed from wednesday's high and wednesday's low then it sells off and where does it sell off to moving just below then it pulls off that low and goes into consolidation then we have friday the market just goes straight on up
• 23:00 - 23:30 rolls right on through thursday's high and creating a new high prior to friday the weekly high was formed on wednesday it ran out the stops and all the liquidity that would be resting above wednesday's high all done on friday so we're going to be using these reference points and giving you a lot more insight about specifics and what you're doing with it but for now i want you to know that this is what you're going to be doing going forward every single trading day you're going to document price action you're going to build on your understanding
• 23:30 - 24:00 every month i give you more reference points to add to your charts and why it's important what specific what the information will do for you what uh with advantages it gives to you by having it and by having your charts very uniformly organized like this when you're trading your chart is going to have its independent uh analysis you're not going to have all these things on your chart but these charts are always going to be referred to while you're watching price because by having three charts okay because
• 24:00 - 24:30 you're gonna have one that's executable in other words what you're watching on the setup right now because you never want to marry the ideas that you have in your analysis you need to reflect on them but you don't want to be so cast iron can't do it any other way it has to be that way otherwise if you're watching real-time price action if you see something that doesn't make sense for what the underlying conditions that you're expecting occurs in the marketplace you won't have the flexibility to switch gears or go to the sidelines you'll just hold on to the market with strong conviction and that that's imposing your
• 24:30 - 25:00 will that the market's going to do what they're going to do and it's not going to happen because you want it to happen it's going to happen because it's going to happen and we try to get in sync with what the market's going to do whether it's going to be moving sideways whether it's going to go higher whether it's going to lower we don't know any of those uh directions with a great deal of certainty we just know probabilities and but we know how to go into the marketplace looking for these types of things over and over and over again they repeat and you'll be able to find those repeating uh occurrences in price action after
• 25:00 - 25:30 going through this mentorship