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0:00 In this ICT entry checklist video, I'm going to show you everything you need. Where to find entries, how to enter, where to set your stop-loss, and where to set your targets. This video is going to equip you and show you exactly how to enter your trades with maximum success. If you're sick of getting faked out in your trades, chasing trades too early, or constantly wondering if you're too late, this checklist will change the way you trade. Today I'm breaking down the exact stepbystep process I now use with smart money concepts and ICT concepts to find high probability entries with sniper precision. I'll walk you through it live. No fluff real method. Let's go.
0:46 If you're like me a few years ago, you've probably marked up solid key levels. You've watched price dance around them and still found yourself getting stopped out or watching the move leave without you. And you might be that person that can just stop and realize you know you are close but something's missing the actual entry criteria. You've studied smart money concepts. You know about liquidity, fair value gaps, changing character, breakoff structures. But when it's time to enter, the market plays tricks on you. You either jump in without confirmation or you wait too long and watch the move run without you. This leads to hesitation, doubt, and really takes a knock at your confidence. That was honestly me until I built
1:32 clean, repeatable entry checklist that takes the guesswork out of every trade. Once I started following this, my confidence increased and my trading became so much more simple. Now, let me walk you through it. Step number one, you want to mark out your key levels. These key levels can include swing high or swing low points. So, if you can find a swing low in the market or a swing high in the markets, you're going to mark out these levels. And these are going to be liquidity levels where you wait for price to come to. So, what you're going to do is open your chart and mark out the extreme highs and the extreme lows. And these are the places where you can find resting pools of liquidity and excellent places to look for entries. price always moves from liquidity to liquidity. So the more you
2:19 can start to trace the liquidity, the more you can find out places where you're going to get excellent entries. You can also use previous higher time frame candle highs and lows. So what you can do is look for a 4hour, daily or weekly candle and then you mark out the highs and the lows and these become areas where you can pay attention when price comes to these levels. Here's an example. So over here you've either got the daily, 4 hour or the weekly candle. And then what you can do is you mark out the high and the low. When price comes to the high of that candle or the low of that candle, that's where you want to pay attention and look for your entry criteria, which I'm about to cover in a second. So just imagine here we've got the daily candle. This is the previous day high, the previous day low. When price comes up to the previous day high, this acts as a draw on liquidity. And
3:06 then we want to see how does price respond when it comes to this key level. And this is precisely where we're going to look for an entry. If you want to dive deeper into understanding liquidity, check out my video in the top right hand corner here. This will go deeper into these concepts. Then we've also got fair value gaps which we can use as key entry levels. So you can see when we get displacement to the downside, price will often leave gaps in these candles. And these gaps, whether it's bearish gaps or bullish gaps, these are fair value gaps. And these are excellent places to look for entries or exits. If you look at this example, you can see we got displacement to the downside. All this bearish displacement, it leaves behind imbalances in the market. These fair value gaps. We mark out these fair value gaps. And these are
3:52 places we can look to take an entry when price comes to these levels. These are very high probability levels that I always use and I get a lot of success using them. So, the key levels you really want to pay attention to are swing high or swing lows, higher time frame candle highs and lows, and fair value gaps. You mark these out on your charts and then you wait for price to come to these levels before you look for an entry. Step number two, wait for price to come to the key level. This sounds super basic, but it's where most traders lose money. You don't want to trade until price comes to your key level. Let the market come to you. So, if you look at this example, I've marked out a swing high point. It's an extreme high in the market. I've marked out this level, and you can see price comes to
4:37 this level. We start to get a reaction at this point. This is precisely where I want to drop onto a lower time frame to look for an entry. In this example, I've marked out the previous higher time frame candle, low and high. You can see as price comes into that area and fails to displace. This is where I want to look for an entry. In this bearish example, price is going up and then price comes up to this previous candle high, you can see it's finding resistance at that level. And this is precisely another location you want to consider looking for an entry. Or what you can do is you can mark out your fair value gaps. You can see over here wherever we going to find displacement, we're going to find imbalances and fair value gaps. And price always likes to come back to these levels. So you can see price comes into this fair value gap. We're getting rejection into this level. That is precisely where you want
5:25 to start to look for an entry. Step number three, looking for entry criteria. This is a list of my entry criteria. I keep things super simple, super easy. So first I want to look for a failure to displays on the higher time frame. Then I want to observe if it's true manipulation that's happening. I want to mark out the CISD level. And then I want to set my stop loss and my targets. So firstly, you want to look for rejection candles forming on the higher time frame either daily, 4 hour or 1 hour by your key levels which I've just gone through. What you want to see is you want to see this failure to displace pattern happening at either a swing high, a swing low, a higher time frame candle, high or low, or a fair value gap. This is our entry signature.
6:10 So make sure you pay close attention to how this pattern looks. You want to see this pattern forming in a key level zone. Here's an example. You can see price is coming up to a key level. Then we get the failure to displace pattern happening. You can see price is dropping down to a key level. And then we get a failure to displace happening at a key level. This is step one of the entry criteria that you look for. Price is coming up to a fair value gap. And then you see our failure to displace pattern forming or price is dropping down into our fair value gap and it's forming a failure to displace candle pattern. Once you see that happening, you want to drop down to an entry time frame, either a five minute or a 15minut time frame and you want to mark out the CISD level. So you'll see over here higher time frame
6:56 daily price is coming up into our fair value gap. It's causing a failure to displace pattern which is our entry signal. Then we jump onto the lower time frame and this is exactly what it should look like. If in fact it is a true reversal, the swing high is going to be formed and it's going to form manipulation in the market. You can see the manipulation is caused by this sweep that took out the highs. But there's this aggressive move up and this aggressive move down which actually confirms the manipulation. So what we want to do is we want to mark out the CISD level. It's this red line over here. And as soon as price breaks that line, that is where we want to enter the trade. Going into more detail about the CISD, which stands for the change in state of delivery. It's just letting you know when the market has a high potential from shifting from bullish to
7:41 bearish or bearish to bullish. So you can see price comes up to our key level, sweeps out the highs with this aggressive run. Whenever price takes out a high or sweeps a high, what confirms it is recognizing there's aggressive move to the upside and aggressive to the downside, raiding the sell stops, taking out all these stop- losses coming down. And then what you want to do, you want to mark out the CISD, which is the candle or series of candles that cause the manipulation run. We mark out that level and we wait for price to break that level and that confirms the manipulation and confirms for us to take an entry. Here are some more examples of the CISD. So you can see over here this is our swing high point. Price comes to this level. It takes out those highs, raids out these stop losses. Aggressive buying, aggressive selling. We mark out
8:27 CISD. As soon as price breaks that level, that is where we want to look for an entry. And often times you will see displacement or expansion will start after that point. Here's a bullish example. So you can see we've got our lows here. Price taken out these lows with this aggressive run, this manipulation to the downside, taking out the stop losses. We want to mark out the CISD which occurs at the candle or series of candles that cause the manipulation run. You see we mark that out. Soon as price breaks and closes over that level, we can look for an entry and want to place our stop losses below the manipulation. If in fact this is true manipulation, price will not manipulate past that point again, which means it will keep you safe. Here's an example of the bullish shd. So price
9:12 comes into our key level, whatever key level that is, it raids out the lows of that level. We just need to trace the candle or the series of candles that cause that manipulation run. We mark out that level. As soon as price breaks above that CISD level, this is a confirmation for you to enter. In our bearish example, you can see price is coming up to a key level. In this example, it's a fair value gap. It's sweeping out the highs of the previous candle. And you can see it's causing this manipulation run, this aggressive buying, it usually will cause this V and then we mark out the CISD. When price breaks that CISD, oftentimes it can come up to retest it or just come a little bit higher and then drop to the downside. So where do we set our stop losses? If in fact this is a true manipulation, you can always put your
9:57 stop loss just on the swing high point because price will not manipulate it again. And when it comes down breaks the CISD, we can look for relevant targets which are going to be either swing lows or higher timeframe candle lows or you can also look for targets at fair value gaps wherever you can find sellside liquidity that is resting. Now let me take you onto the charts and show you a live demonstration of how this works. I'm going to break down this strategy step by step and show you exactly how I was able to win this trade over here. It was a textbook trade exactly step by step according to the strategy that I'm teaching. So, make sure you pay close attention. All right, guys. Here I am on the charts and this is a cryptocurrency token that I was trading. It doesn't
10:44 matter whatever market and asset you trade, this strategy will work 100%. So, what you want to do is you always want to come on to the higher time frame. I'm here on a 4hour chart and I marked out the swing high points. Remember the swing high point is always going to be the extreme highs or the extreme lows in the market. I saw price was making this aggressive run to the upside and I marked out the swing high as a potential area. I would look for an entry if price got to that level. So I waited patiently. The key to this whole process once you mark out key levels, you want to wait patiently. You want to sit on your hands. Success in trading is also knowing when not to trade. So you can see price came up to this key level. As it arrived at that key level, that is
11:30 when I want to look for my entry signature. That is where I want to look for a failure to displace pattern forming. And you can see over here we got a failure to displace. This candle failed to displace past the previous candle showing rejection and showing the possibility of a swing high being formed in the market. When you see a swing high being formed or a swing low being formed in the market, this is a strong signal that a reversal is going to take place. Once I can identify this entry signature, then I can drop onto a lower time frame and look for an entry. So I drop down to the lower time frame. I'm on a 15minut time frame where I'm going to look for my entry. You can also see on the 15minut time frame, we also got a failure to displays happening. So you
12:16 can see price was taking out multiple highs. First of all, price is tapping into this liquidity line or this swing high point. And as price taps in here, it forms another high and it takes out that high and you can see we get this manipulation run over here. You can very clearly see that this was the candle or series of candles that caused this aggressive run to take out this manipulation and trigger all these stop losses. So what we want to do is we want to mark out that low and this is what we call the CISD level guys. If you do not know about the CISD this is a holy grail level. So you can see here price swept out the highs. It formed the CISD. So all we need to do now is wait for price
13:02 to break the CISD and close below it. You do not want to enter until price breaks the CISD because when price breaks the CISD, it's a confirmation that this manipulation is confirmed. I waited for price to break below the CISD level and I entered my trade exactly on the CISD at the break. Stop loss was above these previous swing high points and then I targeted the lower fair value gap. You can see over here there's a fair value gap in this region. And this is precisely where I look to take my profits. You can also use targets as swing highs or swing lows or higher time frame candle highs and lows as well. This was my entry setup and you can see as price broke below the CISD, it just
13:49 melted down. Took a little bit while there you go. Finally took out a profit. See sometimes has look at this. Price dropped all the way down. was so close to my exit point and it never got triggered and then it ended up hovering around here and then there was this quick spike to the downside which actually would have been a long entry. Price was taking out these lows and then took off to mitigate these upper fair value gaps. This was a very successful trade. It was a very quick trade but if you plan your entry checklist and follow these steps, I'm certain you're going to get the same results. Once I started using this framework, I stopped chasing trades and started waiting like a sniper. And that gave me something most traders never feel, which is confidence
14:35 over my trades. If you want this entire checklist in a downloadable format and you want to learn how I use it with my proprietary SMCX indicator, I have an indicator that does this automatically for you, marking out all these levels on the chart. If this interests you, click the link below. My course breaks down the entire ICT model, including entry, risk, psychology, and execution with over 20 hours of training. If you're done guessing and ready to start trading with purpose, this is for you. If this video helped you, please smash that like button. It tells YouTube this is the kind of content that traders need. Drop a comment with the word checklist, and I'll send you a copy of this trading
15:21 checklist. Subscribe if you're also on a journey to becoming an independent trader looking for an edge. I'll see you in the next one. Happy trading.
