Ask ten traders what an order block is and you may get ten answers. In ICT terms the idea is simple: it is the last candle in the opposite direction before a strong move. That candle shows where large orders were placed before price ran away, and traders expect price to react when it comes back there.
Bullish and bearish order blocks
- Bullish order block: the last down candle before a strong move up. Its zone (often from its open to its low) is a possible support.
- Bearish order block: the last up candle before a strong move down. Its zone (open to high) is a possible resistance.
Not every candle is an order block
Almost any chart has a "last opposite candle" before every move. The ones worth watching usually have something more:
- Displacement: the move away from it is fast and strong, not a slow drift.
- A fair value gap: the move leaves an FVG behind. An order block with a gap next to it is much stronger.
- A change of structure: the move breaks a swing high or low (a BOS or MSS).
- Liquidity taken first: the candle formed right after a sweep of an old high or low.
- Not yet used: price has not come back to it since. The first return is the one traders watch.
Using an order block
Most traders wait for price to come back into the block in the direction of the higher time frame trend, then enter at the block's open or its middle (the "mean threshold"), with the stop beyond the far side of the block. A close straight through the block means the idea failed.
Breaker blocks
Sometimes an order block fails: price closes through it. If that move also breaks structure, the failed block can flip and act from the other side. That flipped zone is a breaker block. A classic bullish breaker forms like this: price makes a low, rallies, sweeps that low, then rallies hard above the last high. The up candle(s) before the sweep become support on the way back.
Order blocks in ICC Charts
The Order Blocks layer (with breakers) in the web terminal draws these zones on any time frame and fades them once they are used. The Breaker Model in the scanner marks setups built on a breaker, and the FVG article explains the gaps that make a block stronger.
Education only. Trading involves risk and no zone holds every time. 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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