Before you look for an entry, it helps to ask one question: which way is the market more likely to go today? ICT traders call the answer the daily bias. It is not a prediction and it is never certain. It is a way to stop you from arguing with the bigger picture, and to decide which side of the market you will look at.
What daily bias is, and what it is not
A bias is a leaning. If your bias is bullish, you look for buy setups and you are careful with sells. If it is neutral, the sensible choice is often to wait. A bias does not give you an entry. You still need a liquidity sweep, a market structure shift or a level to trade from.
Five simple inputs
You can build a bias by hand from a few clear questions. The ICC Charts engine uses five of them, each one scoring bullish (+1), bearish (-1) or neutral (0):
- Daily structure. Was the last break on the daily chart up or down?
- 4-hour structure. Was the last break on the 4-hour chart up or down?
- The 20-day range. Is price in the discount half (below the middle) or the premium half of the last 20 days? Discount votes bullish, premium votes bearish. This is the same idea as premium and discount, only on a bigger range.
- Previous day high and low. Did today take the previous day's low and then close back above it (bullish), or take the high and fall back below it (bearish)?
- Midnight open. Is price below the 00:00 New York open (cheap side, bullish) or above it (expensive side, bearish)? This one has no vote before midnight, because the level is not known yet.
Add the scores. A total near zero means the signals disagree, so the day is unclear. A clearly positive or negative total gives a bias. In the engine, a bias is set when the score is at least 2 in either direction.
Reading the result
- Bullish: look for price to take sell-side liquidity below, then move up. Prefer buys from discount.
- Bearish: look for price to take buy-side liquidity above, then move down. Prefer sells from premium.
- Neutral: the inputs conflict. Trade smaller, trade less, or stay out.
Notice that structure inputs follow the trend, while the range and midnight inputs lean against it. That is on purpose: a trend is only attractive if you can join it at a fair price. When both sides agree, the picture is cleaner.
A simple morning routine
- Open the daily chart. Mark the last structure break and the previous day's high and low.
- Open the 4-hour chart. Is it moving the same way as the daily?
- Find the 20-day high and low and check where price sits between them.
- At midnight New York time, mark the open and note which side price is on.
- Write the bias in one line and the level you expect price to be drawn toward.
Writing it down matters. If price later does the opposite, you can see that your reading was wrong and change it, instead of defending it.
When the bias is wrong
It will be wrong sometimes. News, a change in sentiment or simply a messy day can break any set of rules. Protect yourself:
- Decide in advance what would cancel the bias, for example a close beyond the opposite side of the previous day's range.
- Never add to a trade just because you "know" the bias.
- Use a fixed stop and a fixed risk. The bias chooses the side; it does not replace risk control.
Bias and time
Bias is most useful when combined with timing. The big moves of the day often start in a killzone, so check your bias before London opens and again before New York. Many traders also like to see the accumulation, manipulation, distribution pattern play out in the direction of the bias: a false move first, then the real one.
In ICC Charts
The Daily Bias layer in the terminal shows a corner panel with the direction (Bullish, Bearish or Neutral), the score, each of the five parts above, and a line called "Draw on liquidity" with the nearest target price in the bias direction. The screener also has an ICT tab with the daily bias for every watched symbol. See the models page for the setups that use these ideas, and treat the panel as a checklist to compare with your own reading, not as an instruction.
Education only. The daily bias is a way to organise your thinking, not a forecast. Trading involves risk; practise on a demo account first.
Open ICC Charts in your browser, free, with the ICT and VSA layers and the model scanner.
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