ICT Trader Basics: Killzones, Fair Value Gaps, the Judas Swing and How the Concepts Actually Fit Together

ICT trader basics are easier than the vocabulary suggests. "ICT" — the Inner Circle Trader, Michael Huddleston — has produced thousands of hours of material and a vocabulary that can feel like a language exam: FVG, IFVG, OB, BOS, CHoCH, PD arrays, killzones, the Judas swing, silver bullet. Under the vocabulary is one idea, and once you have it the rest is labels.

The idea: price is delivered by large participants who need liquidity (other people's orders) to fill their positions, so price moves toward pools of liquidity, takes them, and then moves toward the next one. It does this at specific times of day, and it leaves specific footprints (gaps, displacement) when it does. Everything below is a way of naming where the liquidity is, when it gets taken, and where to enter after it has.

Why price goes up and down (the ICT framing)

In ICT's model the market is not "buyers vs sellers" but an engine that seeks liquidity and rebalances inefficiency. Liquidity sits above old highs (buy stops) and below old lows (sell stops). Inefficiency is a gap where price moved so fast that one side never traded. Price alternates between the two: run a pool of stops, then come back to fill an imbalance, then run the next pool. Direction on any given day is "which pool is being targeted."

Time: the killzones

ICT's first filter is time, because the participants who move the market work office hours. (CME's Globex trading hours are the reference for the session opens below.)

ICT also emphasises the midnight ET open (the "true day" open: price above it favours longs on a bullish day, below favours shorts) and the 8:30 am open. The "silver bullet" windows he teaches are one-hour slots — 3–4 am, 10–11 am, 2–3 pm ET — where a fair value gap forming after a sweep is the setup.

Candles at these times matter more than the same candles elsewhere: a 1-hour close inside the New York killzone carries the cash session; the 10:00 am 4-hour close on a session-anchored NQ chart is where the opening drive is judged.

The Judas swing

The Judas swing is the fake move at the start of a session: price pushes one way in the first 30–60 minutes of London or New York, takes the liquidity on that side (the overnight high or low, the Asian range), and then reverses to run the real direction of the day. The name is the point — it betrays the traders who followed it.

How to read it: at the open, note which side of the overnight range price attacks first. If it takes that pool and fails to displace beyond it (no big-bodied follow-through, closes back inside), the Judas swing is in, and the bias flips to the opposite pool. If it takes the pool and keeps going with displacement, it was not a Judas swing; it was the move.

Fair value gaps (FVG) and inversion (IFVG)

A fair value gap is a three-candle pattern where the middle candle moved so fast that the wick of candle 1 and the wick of candle 3 do not overlap. The space between them is the gap — an imbalance where only one side traded. ICT's claim is that price tends to return to these gaps to "rebalance" before continuing, so a gap in the direction of the trend is an entry zone: buy the return into a bullish FVG, stop below it, target the next pool.

An inverse fair value gap (IFVG) is an FVG that failed: price came back to a bullish gap and, instead of bouncing, closed through it. The gap has now flipped roles — the old bullish gap becomes resistance, the way broken support becomes resistance. An IFVG right after a sweep is one of the cleaner reversal entries in the framework.

Practical rules: FVGs on the 1-hour and 15-minute inside a killzone matter; 1-minute gaps on Asia volume do not. The first gap after a displacement candle is the one to watch.

Order blocks, displacement and structure

• Order block (OB): the last opposing candle before the displacement that broke structure. In ICT terms it is where the position was built, and price returning to it is an entry area.
• Displacement: the aggressive, large-bodied move that breaks a prior high or low and usually leaves an FVG. No displacement, no confirmation.
• Break of structure (BOS): price takes out a swing high in an uptrend (continuation).
• Change of character (CHoCH): price takes out the last higher low in an uptrend — the first sign the trend is shifting.
• Premium and discount: draw a Fibonacci from the swing low to the swing high of the current range. Above 50% is premium (look to sell in a downtrend), below 50% is discount (look to buy in an uptrend). Entries in the wrong half are lower quality.

Where to look for entries (the sequence)

The concepts only work in order:

1. Higher-timeframe bias. On the daily/4-hour: which pool is the likely target today (the untouched high or low)? Is price in premium or discount?
2. Wait for the killzone. Nothing before London or New York opens.
3. Wait for the liquidity to be taken. The sweep of the overnight high/low or the Asian range — the Judas swing.
4. Wait for displacement the other way — a big-bodied candle that breaks short-term structure and leaves an FVG.
5. Enter on the return — into the FVG or the order block, stop beyond the sweep wick, first target the opposite pool.
6. Manage at the next time window. Partial at the pool; reassess at the next 1-hour/4-hour close.

Skip a step and the pattern names stop meaning anything. We see this constantly in the charts people send us: an entry at a gap before any sweep has happened. Most "ICT doesn't work" complaints are steps 3 and 4 skipped: entering at an FVG before the sweep, or before displacement.

How to actually understand it (not just memorise it)

• Every ICT term is either a location (OB, FVG, pool, premium/discount), a confirmation (displacement, BOS, CHoCH, IFVG) or a time (killzone, midnight open, silver bullet). Sort each new term into one of those three buckets and the vocabulary shrinks to something manageable.
• The model is a hypothesis generator, not a signal. "London swept the low at 3 am, displaced up and left a gap; bias is the overnight high; entry is the gap" is a hypothesis with a defined invalidation. Treat it that way and the stop is obvious.
• Back-test the sequence on your instrument at your killzone for 50 sessions before trading it. The framework is popular on NQ because indices respect the 9:30–11:00 window; it is not universal.
• Compliance note from us, because this space is full of it: none of this produces a win rate. It produces a structured way to decide where the stop goes.

MyTradingBuddy maps exactly these locations on the chart you have open in TradingView — the structure, the order blocks, the gaps, the levels — and explains where the current candle sits and what it would wait for. Bring the timing; it brings the map.

Start the 3-day trial for $14.07 and map the next killzone on the chart you already have open: https://mytradingbuddy.ai/pricing

Related reading

• Reading NQ by the clock
• How institutions move price: what manipulation really is
• Order block filled or just tapped?
• The 80/20 of reading a chart

Nothing here is financial advice. ICT is a vocabulary for reading structure, not a signal service. Trading involves risk.