# What Is ICT Trading? Inner Circle Trader Basics · DT Academy > Who the Inner Circle Trader (ICT), Michael J. Huddleston, is, how ICT differs from SMC, what is and is not proven, and how to test it as rules. [Back to ICT Concepts](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/courses/ict-concepts) Lesson 1What is ICT Chapters done # What is ICT Lesson 01 · 6 min read · By DT Terminal Who ICT is, how it relates to SMC, what is and is not proven, and how to study the method as rules you can test. Chapter 1 of 7 ## Who ICT is **ICT** stands for The Inner Circle Trader, the online name of **Michael J. Huddleston**. His teaching came in three stages: - Forum threads from around 2012, on sites such as BabyPips. - A paid private mentorship, recorded around 2016 to 2017. That "Core Content" later appeared on YouTube. - The **2022 ICT Mentorship**: 41 free YouTube episodes from January to June 2022. His backstory comes from his own posts and videos and is **not independently verified**. He has **no documented bank or fund trading career**. **Go deeper** The private mentorship was recorded as monthly modules. The 2022 Mentorship popularised the "2022 model" most ICT content builds on: a liquidity sweep, displacement, a market structure shift, then an entry at a fair value gap. The "institutional" framing of the method is his interpretation. Chapter 2 of 7 ## ICT and Smart Money Concepts ICT is **one person's framework**, with its own time tools (killzones, power of three, the Silver Bullet) and its own vocabulary. **Smart Money Concepts (SMC)** is the wider community label built on that vocabulary. It usually keeps the structure and zones (order blocks, fair value gaps, liquidity, breaks of structure) and drops or simplifies the timing. It also added terms ICT does not centre, notably CHoCH and inducement. **Write your own definition down.** Two people saying "order block" may mean different things. The definition that counts is the one you wrote **before you looked at the chart**. **Go deeper** SMC was spread by many educators besides ICT. He has objected to others repackaging his material, and critics reply that he renamed older ideas himself. Chapter 3 of 7 ## The method in five ideas Each idea is a claim to test, not a fact about markets. 1. **Price moves from liquidity to liquidity.** Orders cluster beyond obvious highs and lows. Price is drawn to them, then often turns. 2. **Fast moves leave footprints.** A strong one way move (displacement) leaves gaps and a last opposite candle that ICT expects price to revisit. 3. **Buy cheap, sell expensive.** Split the range at 50%: longs below it (discount), shorts above it (premium). 4. **Time matters as much as price.** Setups are looked for only in set windows of the New York day. 5. **Start from the higher timeframe.** Pick the liquidity more likely to be reached, then look lower for an entry that way. **Go deeper** ICT calls the zones price may react at PD arrays, short for premium and discount arrays. Chapter 4 of 7 ## Old chart events, new names Critics argue much of ICT **renames older ideas**. An order block is a stricter supply or demand zone. A liquidity sweep is a stop run or false breakout. Turtle soup, covered later in this course, is the name of a setup Connors and Raschke published in *Street Smarts* (1995). The fair view: the vocabulary is newer and more precise in places, and **the chart events underneath are old**. The DT Intensive teaches each one plainly in [Day 11](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/supply-and-demand), [Day 12](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/fair-value-gaps) and [Day 13](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/liquidity). Three ICT names ### The chart event under each name - Fair value gap - Bullish order block - Bearish order block - Old high or low Bullish the move that follows is up Bearish the same event upside down Liquidity sweep older name: a stop run Fair value gap a three candle gap; the event predates the name A strong rally where the first candle’s high sits below the third candle’s low, leaving a bullish fair value gap. A strong drop where the first candle’s low sits above the third candle’s high, leaving a bearish fair value gap. Order block a stricter supply or demand zone **Previews, not full definitions.** Later lessons in this course pin each one down: what qualifies, what does not, and how to test it. Schematic candles, not market data. The bearish column is the bullish one turned upside down. Chapter 5 of 7 ## What is and is not proven **No peer reviewed study** tests order blocks, fair value gaps, killzones or any other ICT construct as ICT defines them. The closest research is on stop loss orders: they cluster at round numbers and just beyond obvious highs and lows, and can speed a move when they trigger (Osler, Federal Reserve Bank of New York). That supports "liquidity sits beyond obvious levels". **It does not support "someone is hunting your stops"**. **A useful description is not a proven cause.** This course teaches what traders mark and how to test it, **never what anyone intends**. **Go deeper** Currency trading activity does concentrate around certain hours (Andersen and Bollerslev). ICT also teaches that price is delivered by an Interbank Price Delivery Algorithm (IPDA). No documented interbank algorithm works that way, and the claim cannot be checked from public data, so most traders who use ICT treat it as a lens. Chapter 6 of 7 ## The record and the criticism **Judge a method by records, not reputation.** There is **no independently audited, long term live trading record** from Huddleston. Independent attempts to track his live calls describe the results as mixed. He publicly entered the 2024 Robbins World Cup Trading Championship. Widely reported accounts say the entry ended in a large loss, but no official result has been published. These concepts are also easy to mark after the fact, so their value has to come from **your own tested results**. **Go deeper** That criticism applies to every student, not just to ICT. A finished chart always has a last opposite candle and a gap somewhere, so marking it in hindsight makes any method look more accurate than it is. None of this proves the ideas fail. Chapter 7 of 7 ## Study it as rules you can test Treat ICT as hypotheses. For each concept: - **Write it as one checkable rule.** - **Test it on a real sample** of replays or logged trades, not screenshots ([Day 9](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/the-math-behind-trading)). - **Keep risk rules separate.** No concept justifies a bigger position. Example 01 ### 15 gaps, one rule EURUSD · M15 1 of 15 gaps kept sweep, shift, gap Old low 1.08380, swept to 1.08310. Close above the last lower high 1.08660 at 1.08730. Gap 1.08510 to 1.08620. 15 gaps, outlined. In hindsight, any could look meaningful. The rule written first, a bullish gap from the first close above the last lower high after a sweep, keeps 1. Sample candles, not market data. Write one concept as a rule Put one ICT concept in a strategy's entry criteria as one checkable sentence. Tag every trade by its concept Tag each trade by concept, like `OB` or `FVG`, and filter by tag. **Go deeper** A checkable rule reads like this: "a bullish order block is the last down close candle before a move that closes above the prior swing high". On risk: EU regulators make CFD brokers warn that **74% to 89% of retail accounts lose money** (ESMA, 2018), and no vocabulary changes that, as [Day 8](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/setting-expectations) covered. Link the trades you take with a concept to its strategy, so its results are read on their own. Once your broker is connected, trades sync from it and cannot be edited afterwards, so the tag filter shows what each concept really did for you. [Day 26](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/the-loop-that-makes-you-profitable) shows how that review loop works. Quick review ## Check yourself Quick review · 0 of 0 Five questions on what ICT is and how to study it. [All lessons in ICT Concepts](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/courses/ict-concepts) [Back to](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy) ## DT Academy [Next in ICT Concepts](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy/ict-sessions-and-killzones) ## The ICT clock: sessions and killzones Lesson 02 · 6 min read ## Try it on your own account Connect a broker and DT Terminal verifies every trade against it. Free to start. [Start free](https://www.thedtterminal.com/login?signup=true&from=academy&entry=closing_card&redirect=%2Fjournal%2Facademy) [Back to DT Academy](https://www.thedtterminal.com/academy) DT Academy is education, not financial advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any instrument. Trading carries a high risk of losing money, and past results, examples and backtests do not guarantee future results. 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