Look at a daily candle that closed strongly up. Inside it, the day usually did not go straight up. It drifted sideways first, then dipped below its open, and only then rallied to close near the high. ICT calls this pattern the Power of 3, or AMD: accumulation, manipulation, distribution.
The three parts
- Accumulation: a quiet range, often the Asian session, where orders build up on both sides.
- Manipulation: a move away from the open in the wrong direction that takes out the stops on one side of the range. This is the Judas swing.
- Distribution: the real move of the day, in the opposite direction, toward the main liquidity target.
Reading it from the open
The key price is the open of the day (in ICT terms, often the New York midnight open). If you expect a bullish day:
- you want to buy below the open, during the manipulation, not above it after the move has started;
- the low of the day often forms in the London or early New York session;
- a bullish daily candle has a small wick under the open and a long body above it.
For a bearish day, everything is mirrored: sell above the open, during the fake rally.
It works on every time frame
The same three steps appear in a weekly candle (a quiet Monday, a fake move early in the week, the real move later) and in a 4-hour or 1-hour candle. Many traders read the higher candle's AMD to choose a direction, then look for the lower candle's AMD to time the entry.
An entry plan
- Choose the direction of the day from the higher time frame bias.
- Mark the Asian range and the open.
- Wait for the manipulation: a sweep of the range on the side against your bias.
- Enter after a market structure shift, from the fair value gap it leaves, with the stop beyond the sweep.
- Target the liquidity on the other side of the range and beyond.
In ICC Charts
The Power of 3 (AMD) model (M8) in the scanner looks for exactly this: a quiet Asian range, then a sweep and a shift in the London (01:00 to 05:00) or New York open (08:30 to 11:00) windows, New York time. The Sessions & Killzones layer of the terminal draws the Asian range and the midnight open. See all the models.
Education only. 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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