--- title: 'I Studied Every ICT Concept, These 3 Made Me Profitable' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=sY7KzAJko1Y' video_id: 'sY7KzAJko1Y' date: 2026-07-05 duration_sec: 615 channel: 'Justin Werlein ' --- # I Studied Every ICT Concept, These 3 Made Me Profitable > Source: [I Studied Every ICT Concept, These 3 Made Me Profitable](https://youtube.com/watch?v=sY7KzAJko1Y) ## Summary This video breaks down the three most important ICT (Inner Circle Trader) trading concepts that helped the speaker become profitable: draw on liquidity, market maker models, and the right mindset. The speaker emphasizes that context and alignment across timeframes are crucial for taking high-quality trades. ### Key Points - **Draw on Liquidity as Foundation** [00:29] — Draw on liquidity is the most important concept; every trade must have a clear draw on liquidity (e.g., swing high, swing low, imbalance, fair value gap) that provides the framework for why the trade is taken. - **Three Timeframes for Trade Framing** [00:54] — Align internal draw with external draw using three timeframes: higher timeframe (e.g., 1H, 4H, daily) for order flow, middle timeframe to determine when the market will move, and lower timeframe (1m, 5m) for entry. - **Four Things Markets Constantly Do** [02:43] — Markets always do one of four things: draw to liquidity areas (buy/sell side), rebalance equilibrium, rebalance to inefficiencies (fair value gaps), or generate liquidity. Every trade should align with at least one of these. - **Market Maker Models (MMM)** [03:25] — MMM helps identify when and why liquidity areas will be met. It includes looking for manipulation, smart money reversals (SMT), displacement, and aligning time and price to determine rejection zones. - **Mindset: Observer, Not Predictor** [05:41] — Traders should be observers reacting to the market, not predictors. Focus on building good habits and satisfaction from process, not money. Wait for the market to be 'dumb clear' before entering a trade. - **Expect to Lose and Not Trade** [08:58] — Come into each day expecting to lose and expecting not to take a trade. This prevents emotional decision-making when expectations aren't met. Build conviction through paper trading and journaling. ### Conclusion Mastering draw on liquidity, market maker models, and the right mindset—being an observer who waits for clear setups—is the path to consistent profitability. Focus on habits and process, not money, to keep what you earn. ## Transcript As a new trader, it's really easy to get lost with all of the ICT content that's on YouTube. But the truth is, you really only need a fraction of it to be a successful trader. So today we're going to talk about the three most important trading concepts with ICT that made me become a profitable trader. I'm going to keep this as concise as possible, because I know you guys are probably tired of getting dated by stupid thumbnails and stupid titles. If you don't get what you're looking for out of this video, you can explain me in the comment section. Let's dive into it. This is concept number one. Now, the most important thing in trading when it comes to ICT concepts and the overall foundation of every single trade that you will take is draw on liquidity. It is the most important concept because every trade that you take, the draw on liquidity is going to be the framework of why that trade should even be taken in the first place. So one thing I want you guys to understand is the three timeframes and understanding why the draw on liquidity is important and what the timeframes are used for when actually looking to frame a trade. Now, one of the most important concepts in these three things is when taking quality setups, you have to align the internal draw with the external draw. Meaning when you're looking at higher timeframe order flow, and again, higher timeframe could be 30 minutes, one hour, four hour, daily. It really doesn't matter because price is completely fractal. In fact, a higher timeframe could be a possible five minute chart if you're looking at it, right? So for example, if we have a draw on liquidity on the one hour, and I know that we're either reaching towards buy side or we're reaching towards sell side, I'm going to go down to my middle time frame, which is used to determine how and most importantly, when the market is going to reach towards that draw. And that's when we can start zooming into lower time frames, like the five minutes, the 15 minutes, and start looking at, is there manipulation, recognizing where the market is most likely to reject from, why the market is most likely to reject from there. And then from there, we can look towards the lower time frames, like the one minute, the five minutes to look for an actual entry targeting the external draw. A lot of the times, the trades that you're going to take which you're going to lose are the trades that you're taking that go against whatever the external draw on liquidity is, right? So every trade that you take with ICT, the most important thing in every single trade that you take needs to have a clear, concise draw on liquidity. Where is the market going towards? Is it a high? Is it a swing low? Is it an imbalance? Is it a trade value gap? Where is it? And understand why, most importantly, is the market going there? If you want to learn how to find the draw on liquidity more in depth, there's a separate video that I'm going to link in the description or right here on the page. You can go click to actually learn more in depth about how to find the draw on liquidity. A big part about drawing liquidity as well is having a daily bias right When you go into the day when you go into the week and you trying to find okay where is the market expanding for That how you start to frame intraday biases and intraday trades off of that overall bias going into the day or going into the week because the market is always constantly doing one of four things. And every single trade you take needs to have at least one of these four things in your mind. Number one, market draws towards liquidity areas buy side and sell side number two market rebalances equilibrium number three market rebalances inefficiencies which is fair value gaps and number four markets generate liquidity so every trade that you take needs to have one of the frameworks are you targeting some sort of drawn liquidity of swing high or swing low are you targeting inefficiencies are you targeting back equilibrium constantly always remind yourself of these reasons why the markets move and align trades with these ideas. Now, the number two most important concept, in my opinion, that comes to IPT concepts is market maker models, market maker buy and sell models. Now, we know, like I just said before, that the markets are constantly doing poor things. When we use that idea and then we implement market maker models to it, it gives us an identification to find exactly when and why those areas are going to be met. We can look for manipulation in areas that we already expect to reject like fair value gaps after a buy side or sell side level is taken. You can look for a smart money reversal which is an S&T, look for displacement and use those market maker models to figure out where the market wants to draw towards and actually understand exactly where in the chart should we be rejecting and where should we be looking to take a trade. Now when I'm looking to take a trade I'm looking for an area in which time and price is aligning. Meaning time and price are aligning in relationship to the model. Let me dive further into this. A draw on liquidity doesn't necessarily mean anything unless you know exactly when the market is going towards that level. You might think the market is going towards a high and the entire week we never even reach that high because you're focused too much on the high instead of what price is actually showing you. Our goal is not to predict when we are trading. Our goal is to simply be an observer and react to what the market is showing us. Is there a reason for price to bounce? Is there a reason for price to draw towards them? Have we reached back to equilibrium? Has there been an efficiency? Is there a turtle soup? Is there all of these concepts that is telling us exactly when and why the market is drawing towards those highs? A lot of the time, I find myself seeing newer ICT traders looking for random fair value gaps, taking trades off of random entries, because they don't understand that context is the most important part of ICT concepts Fair value gaps breaker blocks buy side sell side it means absolutely nothing unless you have some sort of context as to why the market should be going towards those areas Market maker models gives us an understanding as to when and why, and also gives us an understanding of when that we should be actually taking trades, when we can expect the market to actually start working towards buy side or sell side, or whatever the internal drama could be. If you want to learn more about market maker models, which I highly, highly recommend you do, I have a whole video on YouTube about market maker models, how to see them, what exactly are they. I'll link that in the description, also on the page here that you can click and go check that out. Now, the third concept of ICT that may be plausible, which isn't honestly really an ICT concept, but more of a mindset that completely changed my trading. And it's a mix of kind of two things. Number one, every time that you come into the market, you cannot be focused on making money. As traders, we are simply observers. I am simply coming into the day and watching the market and being told what to do. You are not paid for your time. You are not paid to sit in front of the charts all day. You are simply paid for your decisions and you have to start treating it as a business. Every time that you come into the market, you need to be focused on building satisfaction. You need to reprogram your mind to get satisfaction from building good habits, not making money. Because what's going to happen is those habits are going to continue to hold over over time and you're going to end up making more money in the long run when you start focusing on these things. Every day, you need to be focused on trading your edge, building conviction, having good risk managers, having good position sizing, not over leveraging. If a student comes to me and says, Justin, I made $10,000 today, but they broke every single one of their rules. They over leveraged. They took a dumb trade. I'm going to say that money is not yours. There is no reason you should be happy about making 10 grand because guess what? That market is going to take it right back from you because you don't have the habits in place to keep that money. Trading is more about keeping money than it is making money. Because guess what? It is extremely easy to make money. It is hard to keep it. Now, the second part of this is be an opportunist. Do not try to predict what the market is going to do. Have an idea, have a bias of what you think the market might react, but wait for the market to be dumb clear and show you exactly what it wants to do. How many of you guys have been in the market and looking to take a trade and you think it's good, you think it's ready to go, you're hesitant on the entry, you end up taking it and it doesn't work out. And then maybe 20 minutes go by and then the market shows you exactly what you're looking for and it is exactly what you want to see and you have zero hesitation and then it ends up working out It because a lot of the times you guys are taking trades based off of ideas because you focused on making money and focused on just pressing a button than actually waiting for exactly what you looking for When the market is dumb clear it dumb clear It easy. You're going to see it happen and you're going to execute. When it's not, you're going to hesitate, but you're still end up taking the setup. Why do you hesitate? Why are you still taking the setup when you know it's not exactly what you're looking for? So the second part of is wait for the market to be done clear. If the market tells you it's ready to go, it's ready to go. This one idea completely changed my trading because I found myself taking unnecessary losses of trades that I thought might work out but didn't look the greatest, but I just took them because I couldn't sit still. I wanted to press the button. The longer I trade in my career, as the years go by, I find myself trading less and less and spending less time on the charts because I know exactly what I'm looking for. If I wake up and I spend an hour and a half on the charts, two hours, and I see exactly nothing, I know that I shouldn't be trading. There's no reason for me to be even sitting there. Now, a big part of it is also building the confidence and the experience to know what you're looking for. And that takes time. When you're in your early stages of trading, you should be testing ideas on paper. Paper trades, journals, test ideas. That's the only way that you can build actual conviction in yourself and actual experience. Because when the time comes when you want to put in capital, you need to have the actual confidence to do so by seeing it happen over and over and over and over again. So come into every day expecting to, number one, lose and expecting to not take a trade. Because when you come into a day setting expectations and those expectations don't get met is when emotional decision making happens. You come into the day thinking, I'm going to make so much money, I can't wait to pass my fund account. And then there's no setup that you see that's right, but yet you take trades anyway because you set intentions. You set expectations. When your intention is to make money, your decisions reflect that. When your intentions are to build good habits, your decisions reflect that. And you are paid from your decisions, not your time. So start treating trading as a business. Not like you're just jumping on Fortnite with your friends and taking random setups for fun. A lot of you guys might say that trading trading as a video game is a good thing. In reality, it's not. If you apply these concepts that I just explained in this video, you're already ahead of 90% of traders who just keep running in circles looking for the next best strategy. So go do what you need to do, get the fuck off YouTube, start working, and start practicing these things in the field. Thank you guys for all the love. I hope you guys enjoyed this video, and I'll see you in the next one.