What Is the ICT 2022 Model?
The ICT 2022 Model is the entry sequence Michael Huddleston taught in his free 2022 YouTube mentorship. With a higher-timeframe draw on liquidity in mind, wait for a stop raid on buy-side or sell-side liquidity in a kill zone, then displacement that creates a market structure shift. Entry is at the fair value gap; the target is the opposing liquidity.
Huddleston ran the series live on his YouTube channel during 2022. The official playlist, 2022 ICT Mentorship on The Inner Circle Trader channel, runs from an introduction video to Episode 41. He taught the model through chart examples rather than as a numbered rulebook, so the step lists you see online — including the one below — are summaries of those lessons. You will also see it called the "ICT 2022 mentorship model".
In the order it plays out on a chart, a bearish example reads like this (a bullish setup is the mirror image):
- Draw on liquidity. On the daily or 4-hour chart, decide where price is most likely heading next — usually an old low (sell-side liquidity) for a bearish day, or an old high (buy-side liquidity) for a bullish one.
- Stop raid. During a kill zone, price runs above a nearby high — a previous day high, session high or equal highs — taking the buy stops resting there. This is the liquidity sweep.
- Displacement and market structure shift. Price turns and drops hard enough to break the most recent short-term swing low. That break is the market structure shift (MSS).
- Fair value gap entry. The displacement leaves a bearish fair value gap. The entry is a short on the retrace into that gap, often at its midpoint, with the stop above the raid high.
- Target the opposing liquidity. Targets are the sell-side liquidity below — first a nearer internal low, then the draw on liquidity from step 1.
The Building Blocks, Defined
Buy-side and sell-side liquidity. Buy-side liquidity (BSL) is the cluster of buy stops and breakout orders resting above swing highs, equal highs and the previous day high. Sell-side liquidity (SSL) is the same below swing lows, equal lows and the previous day low. The model always starts by asking which pool price has just taken and which pool it is heading towards.
The stop raid. A raid is a brief move through one of those pools that fails to continue. A wick through the high followed by a close back inside the prior range is the classic look. A raid alone is not an entry signal — it only tells you one side's stops have been taken.
Displacement. Displacement is the move that proves the raid was a turning point rather than noise. What qualifies is judged by eye, not by a formula: one or more large-bodied candles closing decisively beyond nearby structure, little overlap between consecutive candles, small wicks relative to the bodies, and — the practical test — at least one fair value gap left behind. A slow, overlapping drift through a swing point is not displacement, even if it technically breaks the level.
Market structure shift. The MSS is the displacement closing through the short-term swing that formed just before or during the raid (the swing low for a bearish setup, the swing high for a bullish one). ICT's term is market structure shift; "change of character" (CHoCH) is the Smart Money Concepts label for a similar idea.
Fair value gap and consequent encroachment. An FVG is a three-candle pattern where the middle candle moves so far that the wicks of candles 1 and 3 do not overlap. A bearish FVG runs from candle 1's low down to candle 3's high; a bullish FVG runs from candle 1's high up to candle 3's low. Consequent encroachment (CE) is the midpoint of that gap and is a common limit-entry level.
Optimal trade entry (optional). Some traders use OTE instead of, or together with, the FVG: the 62–79% retracement of the displacement leg, measured from the raid extreme to the low (bearish) or high (bullish) of the displacement. When the FVG sits inside the OTE zone the two agree; when they do not, pick one method in advance and stick to it.
Which Timeframes to Use
ICT did not fix one set of timeframes for the model, and traders combine them differently. The ladder below is common practice, not a rule — the point is to read direction on a higher chart and time the entry on a lower one.
| Job | Typical timeframes | What you are looking for |
|---|---|---|
| Bias and draw on liquidity | Weekly, daily, 4H | Premium or discount of the dealing range; the next obvious high or low |
| Setup: raid and MSS | 1H, 15m, 5m | Which pool is taken in the kill zone, and the swing that must break |
| Entry and stop | 5m, 3m, 1m | The FVG left by the displacement, its CE, and the raid extreme |
A useful habit is to keep a fixed ratio between the setup and entry charts (for example 15m with 1m, or 1H with 5m) so that the same setup always looks the same to you.
Kill Zones and Time Windows
ICT teaches the raid and MSS as setups to look for inside a kill zone — the time windows he highlights around the Asian, London and New York sessions. The times below are the ones used across this site (New York time), with London time alongside.
| Window | New York (ET) | London | Role in the model |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asian Kill Zone | 7:00 – 10:00 PM | 00:00 – 03:00 | Builds the Asian range whose high or low London may raid |
| London Open | 2:00 – 5:00 AM | 07:00 – 10:00 | Raid of the Asian range; first setup of the day |
| New York Open | 7:00 – 9:00 AM | 12:00 – 14:00 | Raid of London or overnight highs/lows; 8:30 AM news falls inside it |
| London Close | 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM | 15:00 – 17:00 | Late-morning reversals and continuations |
| Silver Bullet windows | 3–4 AM · 10–11 AM · 2–3 PM | 08–09 · 15–16 · 19–20 | One-hour windows for an FVG entry after a raid |
Two New York reference times are easy to mix up: 8:30 AM ET is when many major US economic reports are released, and 9:30 AM ET is the US equity cash open. Some sources extend the New York kill zone to 10:00 AM to include the first half hour after the cash open. London is five hours ahead of New York for most of the year, but only four hours ahead for the few weeks when US and UK clocks change on different dates (in 2026: 8–28 March and 25–31 October).
Our Execution Checklist Built on the Model
The sequence above tells you what a setup looks like. To trade it consistently, this site uses a five-step execution checklist that wraps the model in bias, timing and trade-management rules. The numbering and grouping are ours — Huddleston did not publish it in this form — but every step uses concepts he teaches. It doubles as our pre-session routine: most of each step is prepared before the kill zone opens, so that during the window you are executing a written plan. Each step is a gate: if one fails, there is no trade.
Treat each gate as a genuine filter. If bias is unclear, stop at Step 1. If the window has closed, the trade is gone however good the FVG looks. The checklist exists to stop you rationalising an entry you already want to take.
Step 2 in Practice: Reading the Raid
The raid is often more than a single candle. On NQ, a run above the overnight high after the 9:30 AM cash open can take several 1-minute candles to finish. Our working rule is to wait for a candle to close back inside the prior range after wicking through the level; a close that holds outside the level means the move may be a genuine breakout rather than a raid. Only then do you start watching for displacement through the nearest short-term swing.
Step 4 in Practice: Choosing the Entry
The default entry in the 2022 Model is the fair value gap created by the displacement. Place the limit at its consequent encroachment (the midpoint between candle 1's wick and candle 3's wick), or at the near edge of the gap if you prefer a higher fill rate and accept a worse price. If the displacement leaves several FVGs, the first one to form after the MSS is the usual choice; the Silver Bullet uses the same idea inside its fixed hour.
Two alternatives cover the same purpose. An order block entry uses the mean threshold — 50% of the order block's body (open to close) — of the last opposing candle before the displacement; it usually means a wider stop. A balanced price range forms where a new FVG overlaps an older opposing FVG, and its midpoint can be used as the entry. None of these outranks the others by rule — pick the one you will apply the same way every time.
Whichever you use, check the zone: a bearish FVG sitting in premium fits a short, while the same FVG sitting in discount means you would be selling at a relatively cheap price inside the range. Our rule is to skip it.
SMT Divergence: An Optional Confirmation
SMT divergence is not part of the core sequence, and a setup is valid without it. It is an extra check some traders add at the raid: compare two closely related markets and see whether both took their liquidity. For NQ the usual partner is ES; for EUR/USD it is GBP/USD; for gold, some traders use silver or the dollar index (inverted).
In a bearish example, if NQ runs above its previous high while ES fails to reach its own matching high, the two have diverged. That suggests the NQ move was a raid rather than broad buying. It adds context, not certainty — treat it as a reason to take the planned trade with more confidence, never as a reason to take a trade the checklist has already rejected.
Worked Example: A Bearish NQ Plan
The prices and times below are invented to show how the checklist turns into a written plan. They are not a real trade and say nothing about how often the setup works.
Weekly (Step 1). The NQ weekly dealing range is 20,640–21,480, so equilibrium is 21,060. The week opens at 21,220, in premium, so the weekly lean is bearish. The draw on liquidity is the prior week's low at 20,640 (sell-side liquidity).
Daily (Step 1). The daily range is 20,720–21,240 (equilibrium 20,980). Tuesday opens at 21,190, still in premium, so the daily agrees with the weekly. Previous day high: 21,240. Previous day low: 20,820. Internal equal lows sit at 20,960.
Before the window (Steps 2–4). The range from the overnight session through 10:00 AM is 21,164–21,248. Buy-side liquidity sits above both the previous day high (21,240) and that range high (21,248), so that is the pool a raid is likely to target. The trader waits for the 10:00–11:00 AM hour, which is both a Silver Bullet window and the start of the London Close kill zone. The written plan: if price raids above 21,248 during that hour, closes back below it and then displaces through the nearest 1-minute swing low, sell the CE of the resulting bearish FVG; stop above the raid high; first target 20,960, second target 20,820; no fill by 11:00 AM means no trade.
How the hour unfolds. NQ prints a 1-minute swing low at 21,188 at 10:03. At 10:07 it spikes to 21,274, taking the buy-side liquidity above 21,240 and 21,248, and that candle closes back at 21,230. From 10:11 to 10:13 three bearish candles — a small one, then two large ones — drive price through 21,188: displacement and a market structure shift. The first candle has a low of 21,226 and the third a high of 21,192, leaving a bearish FVG from 21,226 down to 21,192. Its CE is 21,209. Price then holds between about 21,152 and 21,200, below the CE.
The order (Step 5). Once the FVG is confirmed at 10:13, a sell limit goes in at 21,209. It only fills if price retraces up to 21,209 before 11:00 AM; the schematic above shows the case where it does. The stop is 21,280, just above the 21,274 raid high, so the risk is 71 points: $1,420 per NQ contract or $142 per MNQ. If that is more than your risk limit allows, cut size, not the stop.
The possible outcomes are part of the plan: no retrace to 21,209 by 11:00 AM and the order is cancelled; a trade above 21,280 before the first target is a full 1R loss ($1,420 per NQ); if price reaches 20,960 first, half the position is closed and the rest is left to run toward 20,820 at break-even. The weekly draw at 20,640 is context for later in the week, not a target for this trade.
The Bullish Mirror (Also Hypothetical)
On a bullish week (price in weekly and daily discount, draw on liquidity at the prior week's high), the same plan runs upside down. During the New York Open kill zone, say at 7:48 AM, NQ dips below the overnight low of 20,905 to 20,872 and closes back above it. By 8:05 displacement carries price through the 20,930 swing high (the MSS), leaving a bullish FVG from candle 1's high at 20,918 up to candle 3's low at 20,946, CE 20,932. The plan: buy limit at 20,932, valid until 9:00 AM; stop 20,866 below the raid low (66 points, $1,320 per NQ or $132 per MNQ); first target at internal equal highs, 21,130 (planned 3.0R); second target at the previous day high, 21,240 (planned 4.7R). The 8:30 AM data release falls inside this window, so some traders cancel an unfilled order shortly before the release.
Common Mistakes With the 2022 Model
Trading an FVG without the rest of the sequence. A clean gap on its own is not the model. Without a raid on liquidity beforehand and displacement through structure, it is just a gap — and without a bias it may point the wrong way.
Calling any break of a swing an MSS. A slow, overlapping grind through a minor low does not show the same intent as displacement. If the move that "shifted structure" left no fair value gap, be sceptical of it.
Mixing up the timeframes. Reading bias from a 5-minute chart, or hunting for the entry FVG on the 4-hour, applies the right idea at the wrong scale. Keep the ladder fixed.
Chasing a missed fill. When price displaces and never returns to the gap, the plan says no trade. Entering at market after the fact moves your stop further away and turns a planned risk into an improvised one.
Tightening the stop to make the numbers work. A stop placed inside the raid wick because the proper one feels expensive is a common way for a correct idea to become a loss. Reduce size or use MNQ/MES instead.
Forcing a trade on a no-setup day. Some sessions never raid a clear pool or never displace. Treat "nothing qualified" as a normal result of the checklist, not a reason to loosen it.