ICT 2024 Mentorship Lecture 1 — The 08:30 AM Model

Lecture 1 is where the 2024 series stops being a collection of concepts and becomes a model you can actually run. Everything in it is anchored to one instant: 08:30 AM New York time. Before that instant you are preparing. After it you are either taking a trade that qualified or closing the platform.

That single design decision is what separates the 2024 material from the 2022 model. The 2022 model asks you to identify a sequence wherever it appears. Lecture 1 tells you to be seated at a specific time, watch a specific set of levels, and accept that if the sequence does not print in that window, there is nothing to do. The deliverable was never the pattern. It was the appointment.

What Lecture 1 covers

Published 5 August 2024 as the opening lecture of the free 2024 series, it establishes four things the remaining lectures all assume:

• A fixed timeframe stack — 15-minute, 5-minute and 1-minute, each with one job
• A specific liquidity target — relative equal highs and relative equal lows, defined precisely
• A confirmation requirement — the market structure shift, on a body close
• An entry inventory — order block, breaker, or fair value gap, whichever the displacement leaves behind

Lectures 2 through 5 change the clock and the liquidity reference but keep this skeleton intact. Learn Lecture 1 properly and the rest of the series is variations.

Why the model starts at 08:30

08:30 is when the bulk of US economic data is released. The number itself does not matter to this model — Lecture 4 is explicit that the chart tells the story and the release is only a catalyst — but the volatility matters enormously, because it is what moves price far enough to raid a liquidity pool and leave an inefficiency behind.

ICT's instruction is to be seated before 08:00, not at 08:30. The half hour between them is preparation time: you are building the bias on the 15-minute chart and marking the 1-minute levels that the raid will target. If you arrive at 08:30 you are reading a chart that has already moved, and the levels you needed were formed while you were not looking.

The five elements

Lecture 1 defines its vocabulary tightly. These definitions matter because later lectures use them without restating them.

Note what a relative equal high is not. It is not two highs at an identical price. The definition is asymmetric: one high, then a lower high beside it, produced by a failed attempt to continue. That failure is the tell. It means an attempt was made and rejected, which is why resting orders accumulate there.

If you have been marking only textbook equal highs and lows, you have been finding a fraction of the available pools. The relative version appears far more often, and on the 1-minute chart during the pre-session it appears constantly.

The 15-5-1 stack

Three charts, three separate jobs, and the discipline is in not letting them bleed into each other.

The failure mode is almost always the same: a trader forms a bias on the 1-minute chart. The 1-minute chart during the pre-session is designed to look directional in whichever way is about to be reversed. Direction comes from the 15-minute or it comes from nowhere.

The sequence, step by step

The bearish version. Invert every instruction for the bullish case.

1. Before 08:00 — on the 15-minute, establish bias and identify the draw on liquidity. Which pool is price being delivered toward?
2. 08:00 to 08:30 — on the 1-minute, mark relative equal highs above current price. This is your raid target.
3. The raid — after 08:30, price trades up through the relative equal highs and takes the buy-side liquidity.
4. Mark the first FVG — note the first fair value gap formed before the stop hunt. This is the level that will signal the change in the state of delivery when it inverts.
5. The MSS — price returns into the range and closes below the prior swing low. Body close, not a wick. The shift is now confirmed.
6. Mark the arrays — the displacement leaves three candidates: the bearish order block, the SIBI formed in the drop, and the bearish breaker created by the break of the swing low.
7. Enter on the retrace — a limit at whichever array price returns to. Where a breaker and an inefficiency overlap, that overlap is the highest-quality zone in the lecture.
8. Stop — above the high formed after 08:30. ICT uses the breaker high plus two points on NQ.
9. Target — the next draw on liquidity. Relative equal lows, or the previous session's low.

NQ walkthrough — one complete 08:30 window

An illustrative sequence showing how the criteria stack. The prices are constructed to demonstrate the mechanics, not taken from a recorded trade.

07:55 — 15-minute chart. NQ is in the upper half of the prior day's range, sitting in premium. A 15-minute SIBI sits overhead at 21,690–21,714, unfilled from the previous afternoon. Below, the prior session low at 21,420 is the obvious sell-side pool. Bias: bearish, with the draw on liquidity at 21,420.

08:05 — 1-minute chart. Two highs print at 21,668 and 21,664, the second lower than the first. That is a relative equal high pair by the lecture's definition, and the buy-side liquidity above it becomes the raid target.

08:12 — a small bullish FVG forms at 21,640–21,648 as price drifts up toward the pool. This is the first fair value gap before the stop hunt. Marked and left alone.

08:31 — the release. Price runs to 21,702, clearing both relative equal highs and tagging the lower edge of the 15-minute SIBI. Buy-side liquidity taken, and the higher-timeframe inefficiency is now partly filled. Nothing is done yet.

08:38 — price returns and closes below 21,640 — the swing low formed before the raid. That is the market structure shift, confirmed on a body close. Simultaneously the 08:12 gap at 21,640–21,648 is now violated from above and inverts. The state of delivery has changed.

08:39 — mark the arrays left by the displacement. Bearish order block at 21,672–21,684. SIBI at 21,658–21,676 formed in the drop. Bearish breaker at 21,664–21,678 from the broken swing. The breaker and the SIBI overlap between 21,664 and 21,676, and the inverted first FVG sits just below. That overlap is the zone.

08:47 — price retraces to 21,670, inside the overlap. Limit fills. Stop at 21,704, two points above the post-08:30 high. Risk 34 points.

09:26 — price delivers into 21,506, taking an intraday pool. First target, 164 points, 4.8R. Half off, stop to break-even.

10:41 — prior session low at 21,420 reached. The 15-minute draw on liquidity is satisfied. 250 points, 7.4R on the balance.

The bullish sequence, spelled out

The lecture teaches both directions and it is worth writing the long side out in full rather than leaving it as "invert everything", because the array names change and that is where people make errors under time pressure.

1. Before 08:00 — 15-minute bias is bullish. Price is in discount relative to the range you care about, and the draw on liquidity is a pool above: relative equal highs, a previous session high, or an unfilled BISI overhead.
2. 08:00 to 08:30 — on the 1-minute, mark relative equal lows below current price. That is where the sell-side liquidity rests and that is what the algorithm will reach for.
3. Mark the first FVG — the first fair value gap that forms before the hunt. It will invert when delivery changes.
4. The raid — after 08:30, price trades down through the relative equal lows, taking sell-side liquidity. This will feel like the move is breaking down. It is supposed to.
5. The MSS — price returns into the range and closes above the prior swing high on a body close.
6. Mark the arrays — the bullish order block, the BISI formed in the rising move, and the bullish breaker created by the break of the swing high.
7. Enter — limit at the array price retraces into, ideally where breaker and inefficiency overlap.
8. Stop — below the low formed after 08:30.
9. Target — the next draw on liquidity above: relative equal highs, or the previous session high.

The asymmetry worth internalising is that the raid always runs against the direction you intend to trade. A bullish setup begins with a move down that takes out lows. If you find yourself waiting for a bullish setup to start with a bullish move, you have misread the model.

Choosing between the three arrays

The displacement leaves you with an order block, a breaker and a fair value gap, all at slightly different prices. Lecture 1 does not rank them explicitly, but the working order that follows from the material is this:

The practical trade-off is fill probability against price. The order block gives the best entry and is reached least often; the fair value gap fills most often and gives away more. Where the breaker and an inefficiency overlap, you get most of both, which is why that overlap is the one ICT keeps pointing at.

A useful discipline: decide which array you are using before price gets there, and place the limit. Choosing in the moment, while price is approaching, is how traders end up chasing an entry they had already identified two minutes earlier.

How this differs from the 2022 model

Both models use a liquidity raid, a market structure shift and an entry from a PD array. Someone learning both in parallel will reasonably ask what actually changed.

The 2024 version is narrower on purpose. By fixing the time, it removes the largest discretionary decision in the 2022 model — deciding whether this sweep is the one — and replaces it with a rule you cannot argue with. You either have a qualifying sequence in the window or you do not.

The cost is real. A time-based model misses good setups that occur at 11:15, and a trader running it has to be genuinely comfortable watching those go past. That is the trade being offered: fewer opportunities, far less room for self-deception.

The part of the lecture that is not mechanics

A significant portion of Lecture 1 is not about charts. ICT spends time on the specific psychological failures this model produces, and they are worth recording because they are the ones the mechanics do not protect you from.

Not holding. The most-discussed failure is exiting early out of fear of giving back an open gain. A model that targets the next draw on liquidity produces trades where most of the move arrives in the last third. Cutting at 1.5R when the structural target is 5R does not just reduce the average, it inverts the maths the model depends on.

Impulsive entries. Taking a position because the window is open and something is moving, rather than because the criteria were met. This is why the sequence is written as a checklist with a body-close requirement in the middle of it.

Not recording. ICT's instruction is to record and review price action rather than trusting recollection. A model with this many conditions cannot be improved from memory. The specific value of a journal here is that it tells you which of the criteria you are actually skipping, which is never the one you think.

Which instruments this works on

The model is built around NQ and ES, and the 08:30 anchor makes that explicit — the release moves US index futures hardest, and the two-point stop buffer is index-futures language.

On forex it transfers with a caveat. EUR/USD and GBP/USD respond to 08:30 US data, but by then London has been running for five hours and much of the day's range may already be set. The lecture's own answer arrives in Lecture 2, which moves the clock earlier to 07:00 for exactly this reason.

On gold, 08:30 is one of the strongest windows in the day because of the pair's dollar-data sensitivity, though ranges are wide enough that the stop distance needs sizing attention rather than a fixed point buffer. Use the position size calculator rather than transplanting an NQ buffer onto a gold chart.

Common Lecture 1 mistakes

Entering on the raid instead of after the shift. The raid is the manipulation. Selling into a sharp push above the relative equal highs, before any structural confirmation, means shorting into a move that has no reason to stop yet. The MSS is not optional and it is not a formality.

Accepting a wick as a market structure shift. The definition requires a body close through the opposing swing. A wick through and back is the algorithm testing, not shifting. This single rule removes most false signals in the model.

Skipping the first FVG. Covered above, and worth repeating because it is the difference between a mechanical MSS and a confirmed change in the state of delivery.

Forming bias on the 1-minute. The pre-session 1-minute chart is engineered to look convincing in the direction about to be reversed. Bias comes from the 15-minute.

Trading a window with no qualifying setup. If 08:30 passes and no relative equal high or low is raided, or the raid produces no body-close shift, the model has declined. Most days it declines. Sitting through those days is the model.

Frequently Asked Questions