ICT Reaper IFVG

What Is the Reaper IFVG?

The Reaper Inversion Fair Value Gap is an inversion FVG that forms immediately before a breaker block in the same reversal leg: the displacement that closes through the opposing FVG (inverting it) continues through the swing point, failing the old order block into a breaker. The result is a two-array stack — freshly inverted gap in front, breaker directly behind — created by one institutional move. One of the newest named PD arrays in the ICT lexicon (2026), it marks reversal zones with double backing: evidence of the old direction's defeat plus structure for the new one.

A note on lineage before mechanics, because new named concepts attract both hype and dismissal: the Reaper is not new physics. Its components — the gap inversion's half-defeat logic, the breaker's failed-order-block flip — are core ICT teachings covered in depth in their own guides. What the name adds, and what makes it worth its own page, is the sequence: the recognition that when one displacement leg produces both casualties adjacent to each other, the resulting stack behaves differently from either array alone. Naming the pattern makes it findable at pre-session, and findable patterns get traded with rules instead of improvised.

The Formation — One Leg, Two Casualties

Walk the bullish reversal version (the bearish mirror inverts every element). Context: a downtrend delivering toward a draw, with the down-leg's arrays intact — in particular, a bearish FVG that has been rejecting retraces, and the bearish order block that launched the most recent leg down.

Beat one — the sweep. Price runs the target pool — the session low, equal lows, the governing swing point's liquidity — and the candle body closes back inside. Standard sweep mechanics; nothing Reaper-specific yet. This is the fuel.

Beat two — the reaping. The displacement leg fires up and does two things in sequence: it closes through the entire bearish FVG — full body beyond the far boundary, per the inversion rules; wicks invert nothing — converting it into a bullish IFVG; and it continues through the swing high that the bearish order block defended, failing that OB into a bullish breaker. One leg, two conversions. The critical qualifier that separates a Reaper from coincidence: the IFVG must form immediately before the breaker in the leg's path — the inverted gap sits in front of (below, in the bullish case) the breaker zone, adjacent in price, both created by the same displacement. A gap inverted three legs ago that happens to sit near a new breaker is two unrelated arrays, not a Reaper.

Beat three — the stack retest. Price retraces into the formation. The first array it meets is the IFVG — the front of the stack — with the breaker directly behind it as reinforcement. This ordering is the Reaper's practical gift: the entry array (the IFVG) comes with a structural backstop (the breaker) that both strengthens the zone and defines the invalidation. Entry at the IFVG's consequent encroachment; stop beyond the far side of the breaker; target the opposing draw per the standard sequence.

Reaper vs Unicorn — Adjacent Is Not Overlapping

The comparison every trader asks first, since both patterns marry an FVG-type array to a breaker:

The row that matters most is the first. The Unicorn's gap is a product of the new move; the Reaper's gap is a casualty of it. That difference is why the Reaper reads as a reversal-specific tool: an inversion, by the half-defeat logic, is direct evidence that the old side's array failed under institutional pressure — information a fresh FVG simply doesn't carry. When the same leg also flips the structure (the breaker), the formation documents a complete regime handover in two adjacent zones. Continuations don't produce this shape, because continuations have no opposing arrays to reap.

Trading the Stack — Rules and Qualifiers

Qualify the formation. Four checks, all mandatory: the sweep preceding the leg took a meaningful pool (session extreme, equal highs/lows, a governing swing's liquidity — not a random minor wick); the inversion is by full body close through the entire gap; the breaker formed in the same leg as the inversion, adjacent in price; and the whole sequence printed inside or immediately after a kill zone. Miss any one and you have interesting geometry, not a Reaper.

Enter at the front, invalidate behind the back. Limit at the IFVG's CE — the front of the stack, first touched. The stop goes beyond the far side of the breaker plus buffer, because the trade's premise is the stack holding: a retrace that pierces the IFVG but holds the breaker is the stack functioning (the backstop doing its job), not a failed trade. This makes the Reaper's honest stop slightly wider than a lone-IFVG stop — and the sizing formula absorbs the difference. Traders who stop behind the IFVG alone convert the breaker's protection into their own stop-out.

First retest priority, as always. The inversion rules transfer intact: the stack's highest-probability touch is its first. A stack that has been retested twice and churned through is spent — the arrays' resting interest has been consumed, and the third touch is trading against the pattern's own logic.

Targets by the standard ladder. T1 at the nearest opposing pool (the IRL draw), runner toward the ERL objective. The Reaper positions you at a reversal's origin, which is where the largest deliveries begin — the 3R+ outcomes in our log all came from stacks at higher-timeframe levels where the reversal had room to run.

NQ Walkthrough — The Silver Bullet Reaper

Context: bearish morning delivering lower; 15M bearish FVG at 21,502–21,538 has rejected two retraces; the bearish OB defending the swing high sits at 21,540–21,576. Draw below reached at 21,368 (the overnight ERL) at 10:04 AM — inside the Silver Bullet window, with the sweep wicking to 21,346 and closing back inside.

The reaping leg (10:09–10:16): displacement up in three candles. The 10:12 5M candle closes 21,548 — full body through the entire bearish FVG: inversion confirmed, the gap is now a bullish IFVG at 21,502–21,538. The 10:16 candle continues through the swing high at 21,581 — the OB has failed; breaker at 21,540–21,576. Both conversions, one leg, adjacent zones: the stack is live, and the pre-session down-bias is formally retired by the ITH-grade shift that same leg produced.

The retest (10:31): the stack's geometry in the bullish case: the retrace comes down from above, meeting the breaker zone first (21,540–21,576, the stack's upper layer, which slows the descent) and then the IFVG beneath it — the deeper, better-priced entry array. Limit at the IFVG's CE 21,520 fills at 10:33. Stop below the stack's far side — the IFVG's lower boundary plus buffer: 21,496 (24 points). The 10:38 probe wicks to 21,506, testing the gap's lower half, and holds — the stack functioning as a unit, exactly the interior probe the stop placement is built to survive. (The bearish Reaper mirrors everything: the retrace rises into the IFVG first with the breaker beneath it as the floor.)

Delivery: T1 at the morning's origin 21,662 (5.9R on the 24-point stop) at 11:18; runner into the PM session to the PDH 21,748 (9.5R). Reversal-origin entries with stack-tight stops are where the Reaper's numbers come from — and why it was worth learning the geometry precisely.

EUR/USD Walkthrough — The Stack That Wasn't

Context: London morning, fiber trending down. At 3:10 AM a rally closes through a bearish 15M FVG at 1.08410–1.08444 — inversion, clean. Twenty minutes later, a separate push breaks the swing high at 1.08492, failing the OB above into a breaker at 1.08496–1.08530. Two conversions, both real. Reaper?

No — and the qualifier that says so: the conversions came from different legs. The 3:10 inversion leg stalled at 1.08470; the structure broke on a second, later push after a pullback. The Reaper's premise — one institutional displacement reaping both arrays — is absent; what exists is an IFVG and a breaker that happen to be neighbours, each carrying only its own, weaker evidence. The distinction is not pedantry: our log's failed "Reapers" cluster overwhelmingly in exactly this two-leg shape, because a move that needs two attempts to clear the same zone is advertising hesitation, not conviction.

What the rules did: no stack entry. The lone-IFVG entry remained available under the standard inversion rules at reduced conviction — taken at half size at the CE 1.08427, T1-only at the session high (1.4R, banked at 4:22 AM). The full-size stack trade waited for a genuine formation, which printed two days later off the weekly low: sweep at 1.08080, one displacement leg inverting the 1H bearish FVG and failing the OB in the same move, retest entry at the IFVG CE 1.08196, 11-pip stop below the gap, delivery to the weekly draw at 1.08560 — 3.3R at T1's partial and 6.1R on the runner. Same trader, same week, two similar-looking shapes: the qualifier — one leg or two — was the entire difference between a half-size consolation and the week's best trade.

Finding Reapers at Pre-Session

The formation is scannable in advance, because its raw materials exist before the reversal does. At pre-session, the candidates are visible: mark the prevailing trend's active arrays — the FVGs still rejecting retraces and the order block defending the most recent swing — and note where they sit adjacent to each other in the leg's path. Wherever an intact opposing FVG lies directly in front of the OB's swing, a single displacement through that zone would produce both conversions: that corridor is a Reaper candidate, and it earns a line on the plan ("if the London low sweeps and one leg clears 1.0844–1.0853, the stack arms").

The candidate line converts the Reaper from a pattern you recognise after the fact into one you are waiting for — which changes everything about execution quality. The alert fires on the second conversion (the swing break following a fresh inversion in the same leg), the retest typically arrives ten to thirty minutes later, and the interval is spent doing calm-regime work: computing the size, placing the limit at the CE, writing the stop. The trader who first notices the formation during the retest is entering the fire regime's negotiation; the trader with the candidate line is checking boxes. As with every pattern on this site, the edge is manufactured at pre-session — the Reaper just makes it unusually explicit, because its ingredients are on the chart hours before the reversal that assembles them.

Common Reaper Mistakes

Calling any IFVG-near-a-breaker a Reaper. The formation requires same-leg adjacency — one displacement producing both conversions. Neighbouring arrays from different legs are two ordinary tools, each traded (or not) on its own merits. When in doubt, replay the leg: did one continuous move close through the gap and the swing? If the answer needs an asterisk, it's a no.

Wick inversions. Inherited from the parent concept and still the most common error: a wick through the FVG inverts nothing. The gap dies by full body close through its entire range — the same standard every inversion on this site demands.

Stopping inside the stack. The stack is one unit; probes into its interior are the formation working. The stop belongs beyond the stack's far side (below the IFVG in the bullish case, above it in the bearish) — and the sizing formula handles what the honest placement costs in distance.

Trading it without a reversal context. The Reaper is reversal machinery — it needs an old trend whose arrays can die, a meaningful pool swept, and ideally a higher-timeframe level underwriting the turn. The same shape mid-range, or in the direction of the prevailing trend, is geometry without a story; our tracking treats those as non-events, and so should the plan.

Frequently Asked Questions