ICT glossary
ICT concepts explained simply: market structure, liquidity, price zones, premium/discount and timing. Every term carries a level — beginner, intermediate or advanced — so you know where to start. Click a term for the full mini tutorial.
Every ICT notion, on real chartsThe glossary as a 48-page PDF: one notion per page, each shown on a real chart. Free, no account.See the ICT guide →Market structure
The sequence of highs and lows that shows whether the market is bullish, bearish or ranging.
Break of Structure (BOS)
A break of a prior high or low that confirms the continuation of the current trend.
Change of Character (CHoCH)
The first sign a trend may be reversing, when price breaks structure in the opposite direction.
CISD (Change in State of Delivery)
The moment price stops being delivered in one direction: a candle closes beyond the open of the candles that carried the move.
Swing High / Swing Low
A local high or low surrounded by lower (or higher) candles on both sides.
HH/HL vs LL/LH
The vocabulary for describing a bullish (HH/HL) or bearish (LL/LH) trend, point by point.
Displacement
A fast, wide directional move that betrays genuine intent and leaves an imbalance behind it.
Liquidity (buy-side / sell-side)
Pools of resting stop orders sitting above highs (buy-side) and below lows (sell-side).
Stop Hunt / Liquidity Grab
A fast wick beyond a key level that triggers stops before price reverses the other way.
Equal Highs / Equal Lows
Multiple highs (or lows) sitting at nearly the same level, marking a strong pool of liquidity.
STH / ITH / LTH
A hierarchy of highs — short, intermediate and long term — that ranks liquidity by significance rather than by age.
Liquidity Pool
An area where a large volume of resting stop orders is concentrated, forming an attractive target for price.
Inducement
A small "trap" liquidity zone, created to lure traders in before the real move happens.
Draw on Liquidity (DOL)
The pool of liquidity price is being pulled toward — in other words, the probable target of the current move.
Turtle Soup
A reversal model that trades the failure of a breakout: price clears an extreme, fails to hold, and turns back the other way.
SMT Divergence
Two normally correlated instruments stop moving together: one makes a new extreme, the other does not.
Order Block
The last opposite candle before a strong impulsive move, thought to mark a zone of institutional orders.
Fair Value Gap (FVG)
An imbalance across three candles, leaving a price gap the market tends to come back and fill.
Breaker Block
An order block that failed and had its polarity flipped after a structure break.
Mitigation Block
The last zone price departed from before a break, where losing orders wait to be "mitigated".
Unicorn Model
A breaker block and a fair value gap that overlap after a liquidity grab: the shared zone is where you enter.
Imbalance
A broad imbalance between buyers and sellers that pushes price to move fast in one direction.
Inversion Fair Value Gap (IFVG)
A Fair Value Gap price has traded through, flipping polarity: the old support becomes resistance, and vice versa.
Balanced Price Range (BPR)
The zone where a bullish FVG and a bearish FVG overlap: price was delivered both ways there.
Breakaway Gap
The first of two Fair Value Gaps formed back to back in the same move — the one price never comes back to fill.
Suspension Block
A single candle suspended between two volume imbalances, without being a Fair Value Gap itself.
Premium / Discount
The upper half of a range is expensive (premium), the lower half cheap (discount) — you buy low and sell high.
Equilibrium and dealing range
The dealing range is the working interval between two extremes; its midpoint, equilibrium, separates premium from discount.
Optimal Trade Entry (OTE)
The pullback zone between 62% and 79% of a leg, where you look to enter in the direction of the trend.
Killzone
A precise time window when volatility and volume are historically at their highest.
Sessions (Asia / London / New York)
The three major global trading time blocks, each with its own market behaviour.
Silver Bullet
A recurring 1-hour window, several times a day, where ICT considers setups especially reliable.
Power of Three (AMD)
The three-phase pattern — accumulation, manipulation, distribution — that structures a trading session.
Judas Swing
A fake move early in the session, opposite to the day’s real direction, designed to trap traders.