Three active NQ and forex traders who spent too long watching YouTube videos that never quite explained the why. This is the site we wish had existed when we started.
The ICT framework is genuinely deep. Michael Huddleston has spent decades developing a methodology grounded in real institutional order flow mechanics. But the way most of it gets explained online — scattered YouTube clips, paywalled Discord servers, shallow blog posts that define a Fair Value Gap in two sentences — does not do it justice.
When we were learning, we spent months piecing together concepts from fragments. The CBDR hours were never clearly stated with DST rules. Nobody explained that SIBI and BISI are just FVGs with direction encoded in the label. IPDA — arguably the theoretical foundation of everything — was almost entirely absent from written explanations. We kept notes, built our own documents, tested things in backtests, and argued with each other about what ICT actually meant when he said one thing in 2017 and something slightly different in 2022.
ICTKillzone.com is those notes — cleaned up, fact-checked against each other, and written properly. Every article goes through a two-person critique process before it publishes. Every entry rule is tested in backtest data before being stated as standard. Every claim that could be wrong has been challenged between us first.
We are not affiliated with Michael Huddleston or Inner Circle Trader. We are traders who use his framework and want to explain it as clearly as possible for people who are where we were a few years ago.
I came to ICT from a background in traditional technical analysis — Wyckoff, VSA, pivot-based systems — after a particularly frustrating year of watching my setups work in trending markets and fall apart in everything else. A colleague mentioned Inner Circle Trader in early 2020 and I spent the next six months being equally confused and fascinated.
What finally clicked was understanding IPDA. Not just the concept but why it meant everything else made sense. Once you see that the AMD cycle, the Judas Swing, the FVG fill — all of it is the same delivery mechanism at different scales — the framework stops being a collection of patterns and becomes a coherent theory. I wrote the IPDA article on this site three times before the third version felt like it actually explained that connection properly.
I trade NQ exclusively. Primarily the 2022 Model and Silver Bullet, London session and NY open. My best month was a 14% account gain on a single NQ contract. My worst was a 9% drawdown in one week where I let a bias error compound across four consecutive losing trades. The second experience was more educational than the first.
I write the majority of the concept guides on this site, with a focus on NQ application and the higher-timeframe analysis framework — IPDA, monthly profile, weekly AMD. When I am not trading I work in software, which probably explains why I like frameworks with clearly defined rules.
I started trading forex in 2018, lost money for two years trading support/resistance breakouts and RSI divergence, and then found ICT in early 2021 when I was about ready to stop entirely. The first video I watched was about kill zones. It took me about thirty seconds to realise that every time I had tried to trade off-structure at 2 PM on a Tuesday, I was fighting the entire framework. I went through six months of study before placing another live trade.
EUR/USD is my instrument. I have hundreds of hours of backtested London Silver Bullet sessions logged in a spreadsheet. That dataset is what gives me conviction when I enter — I have seen the same setup hundreds of times and I know what the distribution of outcomes looks like. The backtesting article on this site is drawn directly from the process I use and have refined over three years.
My speciality is entry mechanics — IOFED, SIBI/BISI identification, 1st versus 2nd Presented FVG probability. I spent a long time frustrated that nobody had written clearly about why the 1st Presented FVG outperforms the 2nd in backtests. That article exists now because I wanted it to. Several of the entry-focused articles on this site went through three or four drafts before the second reviewer and I agreed they were precise enough to publish.
Outside trading I work part-time in financial compliance, which gives me a different perspective on why institutional order flow behaves the way ICT describes — I have seen the regulatory requirements that drive institutional timing from an angle most retail traders never encounter.
I found ICT through a prop firm Discord in 2021 — everyone was talking about order blocks and Judas Swings and I had no idea what any of it meant. I spent three months studying before attempting a prop firm challenge. I passed on the second attempt, blew the funded account in month three, and restarted from scratch with much better risk management rules. The funded account failure was the best thing that happened to my trading education. Losing a funded account at the 5% max drawdown limit on a single bad week teaches you about position sizing faster than any article can.
I trade ES primarily. The CBDR is my primary pre-session reference — I mark it every morning at 7 AM ET without fail, alongside the 20-day IPDA range. What I care about more than setup identification is execution discipline: position sizing, stop placement at structural levels, the T1/T2 rule, not adjusting stops mid-trade. The risk management article on this site is mine and I am more proud of it than most of the concept guides, because I have watched good setups turn into losing trades through poor execution far more often than through poor identification.
My role on the site is technical editor — every article Marcus or Sophie writes goes through me before publishing. I push back on claims not supported by data, insist on specific NQ or ES price examples rather than abstract descriptions, and added the two-SVG minimum to our article standard because text-only ICT explanations are almost always insufficient. I also maintain the site's technical infrastructure.
Every article on ICTKillzone.com goes through the same process: the primary writer drafts the article, runs it through a 22-point internal checklist (word count minimum, SVG diagram requirement, FAQ depth, entry mechanics specificity, walkthrough with real prices and R multiples), and then a second team member reviews it independently. We do not publish articles that fail the checklist or where the second reviewer is not confident in the accuracy of the entry mechanics described.
We do not write about concepts we have not traded or backtested. The SIBI/BISI article went through three drafts over two weeks because the second reviewer was not satisfied that the zone filter explanation was precise enough about what “premium” and “discount” mean in the context of a session-level versus daily dealing range. We would rather publish later and publish correctly.
When ICT introduces newer concepts (such as the Suspension Block in September 2025), we note the concept maturity explicitly and include the caveat that community understanding is still developing. We do not present half-understood concepts as established fact.
We are not affiliated with Michael Huddleston, Inner Circle Trader, or any ICT-branded product or service. We do not offer trading signals, mentorship, coaching, or any paid product. Nothing on this site is financial advice — trading financial instruments carries significant risk of loss and we are not registered financial advisors in any jurisdiction.
We do not earn money from the concepts we explain. ICTKillzone.com is independently operated. We have no financial relationship with any broker, prop firm, or trading platform.
Important disclaimer: Trading financial instruments including futures and foreign exchange carries significant risk of loss. The content on ICTKillzone.com is provided for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
We are not affiliated with Michael Huddleston, Inner Circle Trader, or any ICT-branded entity. All concepts described on this site are our independent interpretation of publicly available educational content.
We read every message sent through our contact page. If you find an error in any article, disagree with an explanation, or want to suggest a concept we have not covered, we want to know. Several articles have been substantially revised as a result of reader feedback pointing out imprecision. If you are a trader with genuine expertise in a specific area of the ICT framework and want to contribute, get in touch.