How Long Does It Take to Learn ICT? A Realistic Answer

The honest answer is that it varies enormously, and I want to give you that answer properly rather than hiding behind it.

Some people are reading charts sensibly within six months. Others are still finding their footing at two years, and a number of those go on to trade perfectly well. Neither group did anything wrong. The variation is real, it is large, and anybody quoting you a single confident number is guessing.

What I can do is show you where the published numbers come from, explain why they disagree so wildly, and describe what actually moves the timeline — because some of it is genuinely within your control, and it is worth knowing which parts.

What everyone claims — side by side

I gathered the estimates that appear in the results when you search this question. Here they are together, which as far as I can tell nobody has bothered to do:

Three months to two years. That is an eightfold spread, and one page manages to contradict itself between two paragraphs. None of these figures comes with a sample, a definition of what "learnt" means, or any working at all.

I am not pointing that out to be unkind about them. I think most were written in good faith by people describing their own experience. The problem is that a single person's timeline gets published as though it were the average, and a beginner reads five of them and concludes they are behind schedule when there is no schedule.

Why the numbers disagree: three different clocks

Most of the spread disappears once you notice that people are timing different things. There are three separate clocks running, and they run at very different speeds.

The person who says three months is usually being truthful about clock one. The person who says two years is usually being truthful about clock three. They are both right and they are answering different questions.

This matters practically, because clocks one and two respond to study. Watching more lectures, taking better notes, marking more charts — all of that genuinely speeds them up. Clock three barely responds to study at all, which is disorientating when studying is the thing that has worked so far.

What actually changes your timeline

Some of this is outside your control and some of it very much is not. It is worth being clear about which is which, because the controllable parts make a real difference.

Screen time, not calendar time

Someone watching two sessions a week and someone watching one every morning are not on the same clock, even if both have been at it a year. What builds recognition is repetitions, and repetitions come from sessions observed, not months elapsed. An hour a day, consistently, will take you further in six months than weekend binges will in eighteen.

Whether you fix on one era

This is the biggest avoidable time cost I know of, and almost everyone pays it.

Michael Huddleston has taught overlapping ideas differently in 2016, 2022 and 2024. Study all of it at once and you will spend months resolving contradictions that are not contradictions — they are the same concept described in different years. Pick one era, learn it completely, then look at the others as variations.

Whether you take notes

Watching is not studying. The lectures are long, conversational and full of asides, and passive viewing produces a comfortable feeling of understanding that evaporates the moment a live chart is in front of you. More on this below, because it is worth doing properly.

How many instruments you watch

One instrument, one session, for the first year. Watching NQ and EUR/USD and gold at once means a third of the repetitions on each, and instruments behave differently enough that the recognition does not transfer as cleanly as you would hope.

Prior experience — and it can cut either way

Coming from indicator-based trading sometimes helps, because you already know how to sit at a chart and follow a plan. It sometimes hurts, because the habits you built — needing to be in a position, treating a flat day as a wasted one — are exactly the habits this framework asks you to drop. Complete beginners occasionally move faster for precisely that reason.

A study path that does not waste your time

If I were starting again, this is the order I would use. It is built to close clock one and clock two efficiently so that you can spend your energy on clock three, which is where it is actually needed.

1. Get the vocabulary first. Work through the beginner path until liquidity, market structure, fair value gaps and premium and discount are second nature. This is the fast part, so do not linger, but do not skip it either — everything after assumes it.
2. Watch the Market Maker Primer Course. Twenty-four lessons covering the four kill zones, the Asian range, the Judas swing, daily bias and an OTE primer. It remains the best free entry point that exists.
3. Then the 2022 mentorship, in order. Forty-one episodes, self-contained, and it produces the 2022 model that most ICT content online is built on. Roughly forty hours. This is your one era.
4. Trade nothing yet. Mark levels before each session, check afterwards, and keep doing it until you stop being surprised. This is clock two being built, and it cannot be rushed.
5. Then the 2024 Mentorship, once the 2022 model is solid. Five lectures, each one a time-anchored refinement: the 08:30 model, the 07:00 liquidity hunt, NDOG and NWOG as standing references, news days and the 09:30 open, and the Asian session. Do not start here. It assumes the 2022 material.
6. Pick one model and stay on it. Not five. One, for months, until you know exactly what it looks like when it does not qualify.

How to take notes that are worth taking

Most people either take none or transcribe everything. Both waste the lecture.

What has worked for me, and what I would suggest, is writing down four things per concept and nothing else:

• The criteria. What has to be true for this to be valid? Write it as a checklist you could hand someone else.
• The invalidation. What makes it not count? This is the part everyone skips and it is the part that decides whether you can trade the concept.
• The era. Which year is this lecture from? Two lines at the top of the page, and you will save yourself weeks of confusion later.
• One question. What did not quite make sense? Come back to it after ten sessions of watching — often it answers itself, and when it does not, you have a specific thing to search for rather than a vague unease.

Then, separately, a running log of what you actually see on the chart. Backtesting and journalling are how clock two gets built, and the notes from the lecture and the notes from the screen are different documents doing different jobs.

How to tell you are progressing when the money hasn't moved

Early on the account balance is a terrible progress signal, because it is dominated by noise. These are better, and they arrive roughly in this order:

• You can name the setup you are looking at before it completes, rather than after.
• You mark a level before the session and price respects it, and you are not surprised.
• You sit through a session, see nothing that qualifies, and close the platform without irritation.
• You can explain a losing trade in one sentence that is about criteria, not luck.
• You stop looking for new concepts, because the one model you are running has enough in it.
• You notice yourself about to break a rule, and then do not.

That last one is the whole thing, and it usually arrives long after you would like. If you are somewhere in the middle of that list, you are doing fine, whatever the calendar says.

What makes it take longer than it needs to

None of these are character flaws. All of them are extremely common and I have done every one.

Consuming instead of practising. There is always another lecture, and watching feels productive in a way that marking charts does not. But clock three does not move while you are watching.

Changing models after a losing run. Three losses is not evidence about a model, it is a normal sequence. Switching resets your sample to zero and you learn nothing about either model.

Trading real money too early. Money changes what you can see. A level you would have read correctly on a demo chart becomes ambiguous when a position is open on it.

Judging yourself against a stranger's timeline. This is why I put the comparison table at the top. Someone will always claim they got it in three months. They may even be telling the truth about their clock one.

Is it worth the time?

That depends on what you are hoping for, and I have written a longer answer in does ICT actually work. The short version belongs here too, because it is really the same question.

If you need this to pay inside six months, the timeline above should tell you the answer honestly. If you are prepared for the first year to produce understanding rather than income, and the idea of watching a session and taking nothing sounds like discipline rather than failure, then the time is not wasted even in the stretches where nothing seems to be happening.

And be kind to yourself about the pace. The people I have seen get somewhere were not the fastest. They were the ones who kept showing up to the same session, with the same model, long after it stopped being interesting.

Frequently Asked Questions