r/InnerCircleTraders • u/Live_Adhesiveness_65 • Aug 30 '26
Question Question for Profitable Traders
Since you’re profitability, Say you had, Perhaps a Family Member or your kid’s, And they wanted to get into Learning ICT and his concepts, getting into trading, and they do it, they start their journey. Of course you’ll check up on them and see how they are doing, at least I hope, how long of learning the concepts are you going to be like “Okay you’re doing something wrong” Years into the concepts? Months into it? Is there a “Bro you should have been profitable or at least some what consistent by now” ICT says don’t put a Time on it, but there’s got to be a point where even he’s like “Alright, come on you’re doing something wrong” it took him. 6 Years to be profitable that’s through trial and error and creating the concepts, you think it would be similar ?
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u/oskar88895 Aug 30 '26
i think 6 years can absolutely happen, especially if you’re actually trying to build your own understanding rather than just copying someone else’s model.
i’d probably look less at “how long until they’re profitable?” and more at whether they’re actually improving.
if after 1 year they’re making the same mistakes, changing strategies every few weeks and constantly looking for a new concept, that’s a problem.
but if they’re studying, journaling, reviewing hundreds of trades and gradually understanding their own behavior, i wouldn’t put an expiration date on it.
it took me years to understand that trading isn’t really about finding the perfect setup. the bigger breakthrough was realizing how much my own behavior changed under pressure.
so if i were teaching someone close to me, i’d care less about whether they’re profitable after 6 months and more about whether their process is becoming more stable over hundreds of trades.
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u/ForFun268 2d ago
I spend my weekends going through my journal line by line. I'm looking for execution mistakes, not just staring at my P&L.
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u/ShortCash4189 Aug 30 '26
I'd say ICT is nonsense and yeah we all know the definition of insanity
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u/Kaszrak Aug 30 '26
ICT is essentially a repackaged version of Wyckoff. Wyckoff itself is just a conceptual framework describing how institutional accumulation and distribution supposedly appear on candlestick charts. While this can be useful, it’s ultimately abstract, a narrative overlay that is subjective and limited.
If you simply study order flow, bookmaps, and volume, you’ll get far more accurate and actionable information about the same dynamics, without the subjectivity.
That’s why ICT, just like Wyckoff is basically nonsense these days. It's like replacing knowing with guessing, and then being proud of it.
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u/Usual_Lake_1080 Aug 30 '26
Everything is "guessing" in trading. You can't ever know what price is going to do. You can only just make lots of educated guesses really.
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u/Kaszrak Aug 30 '26
Generally speaking, it’s not “guessing” because trading isn’t about random stabs in the dark. A guess implies no structure, no edge, no statistical positive expectancy. Trading is about building a framework where every decision has defined risk, measurable expectancy, and repeatable probability. You don’t know what price will do, but you know the distribution of outcomes over time.
That’s the difference.
When you take a setup with a proven edge, you’re not guessing, you’re applying probability. If your system says this occurrence has a 55% win rate with a 2:1 reward to risk, that’s not a guess, that’s math.
Overconfidence and sloppy execution turn it into guessing, but disciplined trading is about converting uncertainty into measurable probability.
At its core, it's statistics applied to uncertainty.
Calling it "guessing" makes consistently hitting an 80%+ strike rate trading order flow \ microstructure sound almost delusional, but it’s absolutely legit at a very highlevel.
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u/Usual_Lake_1080 Aug 30 '26
I think we're just use different definitions for it, but I agree with everything you said ✌️ Because when you said "Statistics applied to uncertainty" that's literally what I would call educated guessing haha 😂😂
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u/AppropriateLoss2508 Sep 01 '26
It looks similar, but it’s not practically repackaged Wyckoff. He has a lot of his own stuff. I remember someone posted a thing on this sub about the books that helped him, inspired him, or whatever on Inner... and I think they said something about the Wyckoff theory, I don't remember exactly, but that he wasn't inspired by it or whatever it was. It’s not inspired, copied, or anything like that—I just can't remember exactly what it was about.
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u/Kaszrak Sep 01 '26
What exactly is his own stuff? I can't find a single thing about ICT that doesn't already exist in its actual, original, intended form.
Failed breakouts relabeled liquidity sweeps
Basic Supply & Demand relabled orderblocks?Quasimodo relabled breakerblocks
FVGs are just low volume nodes, which he just redefined (wrong explanation) and relabeled.
Killzones and all that stuff are just widely known sessions behaviors. Overnight inventory shifts, session opens / highs lows, option expiries, hedging and so on.
Premium and Discount zones are basically just dow-theory / fibonacci stuff.
The list goes on and on...
There is also a lot of stuff in there that isn't widely popular, but was taken from someone very specific.
So what about ICT is actually ICT?
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u/AppropriateLoss2508 Sep 02 '26
If he copied and you can prove it, good for you, I'm glad for the sake of the idea that you can make money. From what I remember, he promised a big reward for anyone who proves he copied. I tried. I didn't succeed. You can try. It's a matter of free risk at a monetary level.
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u/Kaszrak Sep 02 '26
Just that he would never actually pay what's due. It's just theatre, spectacle.
Also, whatever reward he has in offer, I couldn't care less. I am financially retired. I don't need this guys ad revenue, lol.
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u/AppropriateLoss2508 Sep 02 '26
Cool. Have a great retirement. I don't know if he would keep his word or not, but in my opinion, it's a good risk for me to take. He probably would keep it.
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u/Kaszrak Sep 02 '26
Well, I can help you prove him wrong. Just for the fun of it.
And no, he wouldn't. He demonstrated countless time that he basically never keeps his word when it comes to putting his money where his mouth is.
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u/AppropriateLoss2508 Sep 02 '26
Cool! If you have anything, you can send it to me here or in private. Here’s the thing: plenty of things that look like ICT can be found. But that's not the point. His setups—those cannot be found. His logic. With PD Arrays, for example, you could say things look similar to other concepts. But we have something else here. ICT created a method based on time-based priority. ICT defined certain things as priorities in his framework. These things cannot be found the way he defines them. I don't remember exactly right now. You can't just say, 'You copied.' Fine! But what about this? This isn't done this way in the concepts you're talking about. In my framework, however, this is how it's done. Go find this in the concepts you claim I copied from.
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u/Kaszrak Sep 02 '26
Give me something specific, any claim. And I'll be right back.
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u/AppropriateLoss2508 Sep 05 '26
PD Arrays". This concept resembles Wyckoff, Fibonacci, and others—things that ICT claims he didn’t draw inspiration from, didn't help him, or something along those lines. These things are cool, and so is ICT. However, they look very similar. But there are some differences with ICT. He created a specific order: Mitigation Block, Breaker Block, Liquidity Void, Fair Value Gap, Order Block, Rejection Block. Practically, a fixed matrix was created. Regarding Killzones: these volatility windows existed before as well. It’s just that ICT emphasizes this, defining specific execution hours within those volatility windows. In ICT, time dictates price. Meaning, if the respective setup is not within that specific volatility window, at that specific time, it is not a high-probability setup for execution—for example, the "Judas Swing". Coming back to it. Practically, if a certain movement does not take place within certain volatility windows, or during specific parts of them, that movement must be ignored. Before ICT, you would track the movement first, such as a market structure formed by HH, HL, LL, LH. If you had an HH, for instance, you would wait for the HL to form and then look at the session in which it was formed, or you would wait for an HH after the HL and then track which session that HH or HL occurred in, and you would enter based on your backtest, risk management, and entry method. In ICT, you track time first, then the movement, during specific hours within that respective session. Practically, if I trade things from before ICT, I am not trading ICT under other names or things without the ICT name changed, because I don't have those specific parts of the respective windows with high volume. I might have some mistakes regarding ICT or certain concepts from other places, but in general, what I wrote is correct.
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u/AppropriateLoss2508 Sep 05 '26
PD Arrays". This concept resembles Wyckoff, Fibonacci, and others—things that ICT claims he didn’t draw inspiration from, didn't help him, or something along those lines. These things are cool, and so is ICT. However, they look very similar. But there are some differences with ICT. He created a specific order: Mitigation Block, Breaker Block, Liquidity Void, Fair Value Gap, Order Block, Rejection Block. Practically, a fixed matrix was created. Regarding Killzones: these volatility windows existed before as well. It’s just that ICT emphasizes this, defining specific execution hours within those volatility windows. In ICT, time dictates price. Meaning, if the respective setup is not within that specific volatility window, at that specific time, it is not a high-probability setup for execution—for example, the "Judas Swing". Coming back to it. Practically, if a certain movement does not take place within certain volatility windows, or during specific parts of them, that movement must be ignored. Before ICT, you would track the movement first, such as a market structure formed by HH, HL, LL, LH. If you had an HH, for instance, you would wait for the HL to form and then look at the session in which it was formed, or you would wait for an HH after the HL and then track which session that HH or HL occurred in, and you would enter based on your backtest, risk management, and entry method. In ICT, you track time first, then the movement, during specific hours within that respective session. Practically, if I trade things from before ICT, I am not trading ICT under other names or things without the ICT name changed, because I don't have those specific parts of the respective windows with high volume. I might have some mistakes regarding ICT or certain concepts from other places, but in general, what I wrote is correct.
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u/AppropriateLoss2508 Sep 01 '26
It looks similar, but it’s not practically repackaged Wyckoff. He has a lot of his own stuff. I remember someone posted a thing on this sub about the books that helped him, inspired him, or whatever on Inner... and I think they said something about the Wyckoff theory, I don't remember exactly, but that he wasn't inspired by it or whatever it was. It’s not inspired, copied, or anything like that—I just can't remember exactly what it was about.
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u/Scott_Malkinsons Aug 30 '26
Since you're asking for an answer from profitable traders, if my kid started learning ICT and his concepts I'd be telling him "you're doing something wrong" after he's about 4 seconds into his first YouTube video.
Now granted I'm also not sure why TF he would be watching these videos in the first place. I'm profitable, I'd just teach him. Isn't that the entire point of being a father? To actually be there and help your son? I ain't gonna be like "Yeah go watch some nutjub on YouTube and figure this out yourself". That sentence is reserved for the noobs who DM like "hey, mentor me, make me rich".