Summary:

– The markets are largely driven by coded algorithms and “smart money” (market-making entities) that book daily highs/lows and engineer liquidity, not by random retail buying/selling or popular chart-pattern religions.
– Time is critical: higher-timeframe bias (monthly/weekly/daily) should guide your intraday decisions. Learn to anticipate whether a day is likely to be an up-close or down-close before the session starts.
– Classic intraday pattern: in bullish weeks expect a “Judas” swing early (initial fake rally to trap buyers, then drop to form the low within the first 60 minutes), followed by a run to the day’s high generally into the late afternoon (roughly 2:50–4:00pm ET). Reverse for bearish days.
– Trade the market-maker logic: price moves to capture pending buy/sell orders or to rebalance/repair inefficiencies (fair value gaps, order blocks). If your method coincides with that behavior it will work; otherwise you’ll be faded by the algorithm.
– Level 2 / order-book prints and many retail indicators (VWAP, volume-profile, harmonic patterns, etc.) are often misleading or manipulable red herrings — focus on price, PD arrays/fair-value gaps, and time.
– Use disciplined execution: prefer limit orders and pre-defined entries, keep stops, manage leverage (start tiny).
– Psychological work and documentation are essential: journal, backtest, tape-read, and paper-trade for months before risking real capital. Identify and fix emotional weaknesses (greed, fear, chasing) to stop blowing accounts.
– Practical routine: before market open, record your bias (up/down close) and why; decide by the opening-range (~9:30–10:00 ET) whether morning and PM sessions will close above/below the open; use those rules to hunt for the low or high of the day.
– ICT these methods live and argues the proof is visible in real-time executions; he offers free mentorship content (2024 mentorship) on YouTube and urges listeners to test the ideas themselves rather than follow shorthand clips or gurus.
– Final advice: be disciplined, take notes, test the concepts, ignore hype and “team” mentality, and progressively build the skills to trade in alignment with how the market engine actually books price.