ICT Intraday Strategy — Sessions + CISD/MSS: A Trader's Full Day

Most beginners treat intraday trading as a series of random opportunities: something broke out, so I'm in. The ICT method proposes something different — treating the whole 24 hours as a single play in three acts, in which Asia builds the stage, London performs the manipulation, and New York delivers the punchline. The ICT intraday strategy glues into one plan everything we've covered separately on this blog: the daily bias, session ranges, the Judas Swing and structural confirmation. The result is a trader's complete day — from marking the overnight range before the London open to closing the position before the New York killzone ends. Below is the full model: three pillars, four scenarios for the day and one exception when trading Asia is allowed.

What the ICT intraday strategy is

It's a session-based model built on three pillars:

1. Daily bias — from D1 and H4 you determine whether the day has an upward or downward character. All the scenarios below are described for a bullish bias; the bearish version is an exact mirror. How to set the direction of the day is covered in the article on Daily Bias.
2. Sessions as the script — Asia (6:00 PM–3:00 AM ET) builds the range; London (opening 3:00 AM ET) and New York (the NY morning) play it out. The key question of every session is: consolidation or expansion?
3. The trigger: CISD or MSS on M5 or lower — no entry happens without structural confirmation on a low timeframe.

The setup's ignition is the Judas Swing: a false move at the session open that sweeps the extreme of the previous range — with a bullish bias, London dips below the Asian low, pulls in sellers and buyers' stops, then turns back. That sweep into discount, confirmed by a structure shift, is the best entry of the day.

The model's parameters are concrete and worth knowing before you start: a trade usually lasts 1–3 hours; the typical range is 50–100 pips (that describes the setup's geometry on the majors, not a promise — on crypto convert to percentages); there's usually 1 setup per session, 2–3 per day; risk-reward is minimum 1:2, maximum 1:3, with half the position banked at 1:1.

The four scenarios of the day (bullish bias)

The core of the strategy is a 2×2 matrix: Asia consolidates or expands, then London consolidates or expands. Each combination has its plan.

Scenario 1: Asia in consolidation (range roughly 20–50 pips). You mark the high and low of the overnight range and wait for 3:00 AM ET. London at the open makes a Judas Swing below the Asian low — price reaches the discount zone and collects the sellers. You wait for a CISD/MSS on M5, then go long. Stop below the London low; target: the Asian high or the previous day's high.

Scenario 2: Asia in expansion (70–100+ pips). An overnight rally changes the plan: you stretch a Fibonacci across the entire Asian expansion and mark the 50% retracement and the OTE zone. London's Judas Swing pulls price back into the Asian range — only contact with the 50% or OTE plus M5 confirmation gives the entry. Stop below the London low; target: the Asian high or the previous day's high.

Scenario 3: London in consolidation (20–50 pips). Sometimes London plays out nothing — then its range becomes the new "Asia", and the role of the Judas Swing passes to the New York open. NY sweeps the low of the London range, reaches a discount PD array, and you wait for a CISD/MSS on M5 and go long. Stop below the NY low; target: the London high or the previous day's high.

Scenario 4: London in expansion (70–100+ pips). The analogue of scenario 2: Fibonacci on the London expansion, mark the 50% and OTE, wait for the New York Judas Swing to retrace into those zones, M5 confirmation, entry. Stop below the NY low; target: the London high or the previous day's high.

The Asian exception. By default you don't trade Asia — with one exception: Monday or Tuesday, when Asia distributes more than 100 pips and sweeps the previous day's low, after which price turns back. CISD on M5, long entry, stop below the Asian low, target: the Asian high or the previous day's high — and if it's the start of the week and the weekly low has just formed, the position can be managed as a swing toward the weekly high.

The trader's day step by step

1. In the evening or early morning: bias from D1/H4. Bullish, bearish or unreadable. Unreadable = an observation day.
2. Before London opens, mark the Asian range (6:00 PM–3:00 AM ET): the high, the low, the character (consolidation or expansion). With an expansion, apply the Fibonacci right away (50% + OTE). More on working with the overnight range: Asian Range.
3. 3:00 AM ET — the London open. With a bullish bias, watch for a Judas Swing below the Asian low (scenario 1) or a retracement into the 50%/OTE of the expansion (scenario 2).
4. Trigger on M5 or lower (M3/M1): a CISD or MSS in the direction of the bias. Without it — no entry, no matter how textbook the sweep looks.
5. Entry directly after the confirmation or on the retest (mandatory on the retest if the post-sweep impulse has already run about 50 pips).
6. Management: stop below the low of the session that made the sweep; half the profit at 1:1; the rest to the target at 1:2–1:3. Target: the opposite extreme of the range or the previous day's extreme.
7. If London consolidated — repeat steps 3–6 at the New York open (scenarios 3–4). The strongest NY execution window falls between 8:00 and 10:00 AM ET, in the New York killzone.
8. Once the target is delivered — the day is over. One trade per session is enough; a third forced setup usually means giving back the first two.

Two filters apply to everything regardless of scenario. The first is the calendar: a day with a major macro release (CPI, FOMC, NFP) plays by different rules — a morning setup can be wiped out by a single news candle, so you either close positions before the print or don't open any that day at all. The second is the day of the week: Monday tends to be a positioning day without a readable expansion, and Friday runs on its own profiles — a trending week is played from the TGIF model then, and a consolidation week ahead of news isn't played at all. The cleanest realizations of scenarios 1–4 statistically fall on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Example: a classic scenario 1 day

Wednesday — statistically one of the cleanest days for this model. Bias on D1: bullish (a defended higher low, an open path to last week's highs). Overnight BTC — because the scheme works on crypto exactly as on GBP/USD, just swap pips for percentages — sits in a range of about 0.6%: Asian consolidation. At 2:50 AM ET you mark the overnight high and low. The macro calendar is clean — the day is playable.

At 3:10 AM London dives below the Asian low — a fast, aggressive candle, exactly where buyers' stops had built up overnight. Instead of catching the falling knife, you drop to M5. At 3:35 AM a series of down opens gets broken by a close above — CISD; two candles later the local structural high falls too — MSS. Long entry at 3:45 AM, stop below the London low, target at the Asian high, risk-reward 1:2.6. You bank half at 1:1 at 5:20 AM; the take profit closes the rest at 8:40 AM, as New York slams into the target and sweeps the Asian high. The whole day: one range marked, one sweep, one trigger, one position.

Common mistakes

• Trading Asia "out of boredom". Asia is the preparatory session — playable only in the Monday–Tuesday exception with a sweep of the previous day's low after a 100+ pip distribution.
• Skipping the bias. Without the D1/H4 filter, every Judas Swing looks like an opportunity — including the ones that are the start of a real move against you.
• Confusing consolidation with expansion. 20–50 pips = consolidation (play the range sweep), 70–100+ = expansion (Fibonacci is mandatory; wait for the 50%/OTE). Misreading the session's character breaks the whole scenario.
• Entering on the Judas Swing itself. The sweep creates the zone; the entry is only the CISD/MSS on M5 or lower. Without confirmation you're buying exactly where the algorithm is selling.
• A stop at the entry level instead of behind the session low. A second test of the swept extreme is standard — a tight stop at the entry dies before the scenario has a chance to play out.
• Greedy targets. The model aims at the opposite extreme of the range — usually 50–100 pips. Beyond that begins swing trading, which requires different management.

This strategy is, in practice, a timetable into which you plug the building blocks known from the other articles: the Judas Swing as the ignition, CISD and MSS as the trigger, the Asian Range as the stage, the killzones as the clock. Before you trade it live, keep a simple 24-hour journal for two weeks: Asia's character, the behavior of the London open, the scenario that played out. After ten days you'll see the market keeps playing the same four tunes — and you'll start recognizing them from the opening bars.

FAQ

Rafał — Krypto Bez Ściemy

Trader and founder of Strefa Tradingu. He’s been breaking crypto down on YouTube for years — no hype, no signals, with a focus on market structure and risk management.

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