Trading strategies explained: ICT, CRT, PO3, Silver Bullet and more

45 trading strategies explained step by step (ICT, Smart Money, price action, indicators) with real cases on gold and forex.

ICT

• Power of Three (PO3 / AMD)
  Each daily candle is built in three phases: Accumulation, Manipulation and Distribution.
• Fair Value Gap (FVG) – retest
  A three-candle inefficiency gap acts as a magnet and as an entry zone in the direction of the displacement.
• Order Block (OB)
  The last opposite candle before a structure-breaking displacement marks where institutional orders came in.
• PDH/PDL liquidity sweep (Turtle Soup)
  Price takes out the previous day's high/low to hunt stops, then reverses.
• ICT Silver Bullet
  Within a fixed time window, look for the first FVG in the direction of the draw on liquidity.
• ICT 2022 model (Sweep + MSS + FVG)
  Liquidity sweep, market structure shift with displacement, and entry in the resulting FVG.
• Optimal Trade Entry (OTE 62–79%)
  Entry on the 62-79% Fibonacci retracement of an impulse, targeting the -27% extension.
• Judas Swing
  An early false move from the midnight open against the daily bias.
• SMT Divergence
  Divergence between correlated assets: one makes a new low and the other does not → reversal signal.
• Inverse FVG (IFVG)
  An FVG that price closes through loses its role and starts acting as a zone of the opposite sign.
• Weekly high/low sweep
  Price takes out the previous week's extreme, hunts stops and returns inside its range.
• London Close Reversal
  At the London close, after a strong move, part of the day's range is often retraced.
• Breaker Block
  An order block that fails and is broken becomes support/resistance of the opposite sign.
• Unicorn Model
  Overlap of a Breaker Block with an FVG: a very high-probability zone.
• Premium / Discount and Equilibrium
  Buy in the lower half (discount) of a range and sell in the upper half (premium).
• Killzones and key hours
  Time windows in which the algorithm produces the highest-quality moves.
• IPDA – 20/40/60-day ranges
  The algorithm seeks the liquidity of the highs/lows of the last 20, 40 and 60 days.
• NWOG / NDOG (opening gaps)
  The gap between Friday's close and Sunday's open acts as a magnet and as support/resistance.
• Market Maker Buy/Sell Model
  An accumulation → sweep → re-accumulation → expansion curve that mimics a market maker's cycle.
• Mitigation Block
  Like the breaker, but without a prior sweep: a failed order block reused from the other side.
• Balanced Price Range (BPR)
  Zone where a bullish and a bearish FVG overlap: 'balanced' price that acts as a magnet.
• Rejection Block
  Long wicks at extremes mark rejection zones; their body is the entry reference.
• Liquidity void / volume imbalance
  Stretches covered with almost no trading that price tends to come back and fill.
• Quarterly Theory (AMDX)
  Time is divided into quarters (accumulation, manipulation, distribution and continuation/reversal).
• ICT time macros
  ~20-minute windows in which the algorithm tends to seek liquidity or fill inefficiencies.
• Weekly profiles
  Typical patterns of how the weekly candle forms (e.g. Tuesday low and expansion into Thursday).

ICT / Price action

• Candle Range Theory (CRT)
  One candle defines a range; the next sweeps one end and closes back inside → price travels to the opposite end.

Classic session

• London Breakout (Asian range breakout)
  Breakout of the range formed during the Asian session when London opens.
• Opening Range Breakout (NY)
  Breakout of the range of the first 30 minutes of the New York session.

Classic / trend

• Pullback to the EMA50 in a trend
  Buy pullbacks to the average in an uptrend (and sell them in a downtrend).
• Donchian 20 breakout (Turtle)
  Buy 20-period highs and sell 20-period lows, following the trend.
• MACD cross with EMA200 filter
  MACD line/signal crosses taken only in the direction of the underlying trend.
• Supertrend (10, 3)
  ATR-based trend-following indicator: each change of direction is traded.
• Ichimoku: Tenkan/Kijun cross with the cloud
  Cross of Ichimoku's fast and slow lines with price above (or below) the cloud.
• Stochastic on a trend pullback
  In a trend, buy when the stochastic leaves oversold (and sell when it leaves overbought).

Classic / reversal

• RSI divergence
  New price low with a higher RSI → selling exhaustion.
• Bollinger Band mean reversion
  In trendless markets, closes outside the band tend to revert to the mean.

Price action

• Engulfing candle at a liquidity zone
  A candle that fully engulfs the previous one right at a relevant support or resistance.
• Rejection pin bar
  A candle with a long wick that rejects an extreme and closes far from it.
• Inside bar breakout (H4)
  A candle contained within the previous one signals compression; the breakout is traded with the trend.

Classic / volatility

• Volatility squeeze (Bollinger inside Keltner)
  After a period of very low volatility, price often expands strongly.

Classic

• Wyckoff (accumulation / distribution)
  Phases A-E: stopping action, building cause, Spring/UTAD and trend.
• Supply and demand
  Base zones (rally-base-rally, drop-base-rally) from which a strong move started.
• Intraday VWAP
  Volume-weighted average price as the day's institutional reference.

Risk management

• Risk management and position sizing
  The most important part of any strategy: how much you risk on each trade.