1. Welcome to the ICT Advanced Course
🚀 You’ve built the foundation—now it’s time to trade like Smart Money.
The ICT Essential Course gave you a solid understanding of market structure, liquidity, order blocks, and risk management—but if you’re here, it means you’re ready to go deeper.
📌 This course will transform the way you see the markets.
💡 You won’t just react to price—you’ll anticipate it.
🎯 You’ll learn how to enter and exit like an institution, not a retail trader.
📈 In this chapter, we’ll cover:
✔️ The deeper reality of institutional market manipulation.
✔️ How Smart Money sets traps for retail traders.
✔️ The mindset shift needed to see the markets like a pro.
✔️ What’s coming next in this course—and why it will change your trading forever.
📌 Image Guide:
📷 Suggested Image: A trader at a desk, analyzing advanced market data with liquidity heatmaps and institutional trade tracking.
🎨 AI Prompt:
“Create a high-quality digital illustration of a professional trader analyzing institutional market data, with liquidity heatmaps and advanced price charts on multiple screens. The scene should have a disciplined, strategic atmosphere.”
2. The Evolution from Retail Trading to Smart Money Trading
📌 Most retail traders fail because they play a game designed to beat them.
Retail traders:
❌ Chase breakouts.
❌ Trade based on random indicators.
❌ Get stopped out before major moves.
❌ Lack the patience to wait for precision entries.
Smart Money traders:
✅ Use liquidity sweeps & stop hunts to their advantage.
✅ Wait for price to reach high-probability zones (OBs, FVGs).
✅ Time entries during kill zones to trade when liquidity is injected.
✅ See where liquidity is hiding before major moves happen.
🔍 Example:
A retail trader sees price breaking resistance and buys the breakout, only to get stopped out when price reverses and sweeps their stop-losses.
A Smart Money trader waits for the stop hunt, enters at the order block retrace, and rides the real move in the right direction.
📌 Image Guide:
📷 Suggested Image: A side-by-side chart comparison of a retail trader buying a breakout and a Smart Money trader waiting for a liquidity grab.
🎨 AI Prompt:
“Create a side-by-side comparison chart illustrating a retail trader buying a false breakout vs. a Smart Money trader waiting for a liquidity grab and entering at the optimal point. Use clean, professional annotations.”
3. Why Liquidity is the Key to Every Trade
📌 Liquidity is what moves price—nothing else.
Market makers and institutions don’t trade like retail traders. Instead, they engineer liquidity traps to fill their massive positions.
Smart Money Liquidity Tactics:
✔️ Creating fake breakouts to lure retail traders.
✔️ Pushing price into stop-loss clusters before reversing.
✔️ Using news events to grab liquidity before major moves.
✔️ Targeting liquidity pools before initiating real trends.
🔍 Example:
A bullish order block forms during London Open, but Smart Money pushes price below it to trigger stop-losses before sending price higher during New York Open.
📌 Image Guide:
📷 Suggested Image: A chart showing price sweeping liquidity before reversing at a Smart Money entry point.
🎨 AI Prompt:
“Design a financial trading chart illustrating Smart Money liquidity sweeps, showing how price grabs liquidity before reversing. Highlight key liquidity zones and order blocks for a clear breakdown.”
4. Why Institutions Move the Market & How to Follow Them
📌 The market doesn’t move randomly—institutions drive every major move.
Key players that move the market:
✔️ Central banks & institutional funds.
✔️ Market makers & high-frequency trading firms.
✔️ Hedge funds executing billion-dollar trades.
What does this mean for you?
🎯 You’re not trading against retail traders—you’re trading against Smart Money.
How to Track Smart Money’s Footsteps:
✔️ Watch liquidity levels & stop hunts.
✔️ Study order blocks & price delivery.
✔️ Use COT (Commitment of Traders) reports to see positioning.
✔️ Time trades during institutional trading hours.
🔍 Example:
An institutional trader accumulates positions below key liquidity levels while retail traders panic sell. When enough liquidity is built, Smart Money drives price higher, leaving retail behind.
📌 Image Guide:
📷 Suggested Image: A visual representation of Smart Money accumulating positions while retail traders exit in panic.
🎨 AI Prompt:
“Create a financial trading infographic showing how Smart Money accumulates positions at liquidity levels while retail traders panic and exit. Use a professional, structured format with annotations.”
5. The Mindset Shift: Thinking Like Smart Money
📌 If you want to trade like Smart Money, you have to think like them.
✔️ Patience > Impulse – Smart Money waits for liquidity grabs.
✔️ Execution > Predictions – They don’t guess, they execute at key zones.
✔️ Risk Control > High Leverage – They manage capital, not gamble.
✔️ Big Picture > Small Moves – They plan weeks ahead, not minute by minute.
🔍 Example:
A disciplined trader waits for a high-timeframe order block retrace instead of chasing price, resulting in a low-risk, high-reward entry with institutional backing.
📌 Image Guide:
📷 Suggested Image: A trader’s mindset comparison between an emotional retail trader and a patient, disciplined Smart Money trader.
🎨 AI Prompt:
“Design a side-by-side trading mindset comparison chart, illustrating the difference between an emotional retail trader and a disciplined Smart Money trader. Highlight key behaviors like patience, execution, and risk management.”
6. What’s Coming Next in This Course?
🚀 In the next chapters, we’ll uncover:
✅ How institutions engineer liquidity inducements & fake breakouts.
✅ How to refine order block & Fair Value Gap entries for sniper precision.
✅ How to track institutional positioning and order flow.
✅ How to create an advanced ICT trading plan based on your strengths.
🎯 By the end of this course, you won’t just trade the market—you’ll understand it at its deepest level.