Silver Bullet
A recurring 1-hour window, several times a day, where ICT considers setups especially reliable.
The Silver Bullet is an ICT concept describing precise one-hour windows — typically 10-11am and 2-3pm New York time — where certain setups (particularly around FVGs) are considered statistically more reliable.
The idea rests on the observation that these windows often concentrate a liquidity sweep followed by a clean directional move, offering a narrow time frame to look for a high-probability setup rather than trading all day long.
Like any timing-based strategy, the Silver Bullet guarantees nothing on its own: it remains a framework for filtering when to look for a trade, not an entry signal by itself.
How to apply it: in Geneva, the most-followed window falls between 4 and 5pm. Inside it you look for one precise pattern and nothing else: a liquidity sweep, then an imbalance created by the reversal, then an entry on that imbalance.
The value of the concept is not magic, it is disciplinary. By narrowing the field to one hour and one pattern, it eliminates overtrading — the main account destroyer among beginners. You cannot take fifteen mediocre trades in a one-hour window with a single setup.
How to prepare: before the window opens, mark the nearby liquidity on both sides of price and settle your bias on a higher timeframe. When the hour starts, all you have to do is watch whether the pattern forms. If nothing shows up within the hour, the day is over.
Execution is generally on the 1 to 5-minute chart, with a stop beyond the sweep wick and a target at the opposite liquidity. The reward-to-risk is structurally favourable because the entry sits just after the invalidation point, not before it.
The classic mistake: widening the window. “The setup formed at 5.15pm, it still counts.” It does not — the time constraint is the essence of the concept. Without it, all you have left is an ordinary reversal setup, minus the statistical filter that gave it value.
Second trap: trading the Silver Bullet with no directional bias. The pattern alone is not enough: a sweep followed by an imbalance happens in both directions. It is the higher-timeframe read that decides which of the two you are allowed to take.