ICT One Trade Setup for Life — The 5-Session Liquidity Raid Model

"If you master this one setup, you don't need anything else" — that's how Michael Huddleston advertised One Trade Setup for Life. As marketing, it sounds like every other promise on trading internet, but underneath there's something concrete: a map of five session ranges that the market visits day after day, over and over, following the same script — a liquidity raid, a reversal, a move to the target. The model doesn't predict the future; it organises the day into a series of places where it's worth waiting for price. In this article we take it apart: the five ranges with their times in ET, the "first opportunity wins" logic, a worked example, and the mistakes that break this model most often.

What is One Trade Setup for Life

It's a daily trading model built from seven blocks: the daily bias, the draw on liquidity, and five session ranges — four of which are potential entry locations, and the fifth the target.

The foundation is the concept of the draw on liquidity. Liquidity, in the ICT sense, is the orders waiting in the market: the stop losses of open positions and pending orders (buy stops above highs, sell stops below lows). The draw on liquidity is the direction in which price is "drawn" toward those orders — because hunting liquidity is, in this view, the sole purpose of price delivery. More on this in the article on liquidity pools.

The model maps liquidity onto five ranges, all in New York time:

• The previous day's PM session — 1:30–4:00 PM ET. Yesterday's final afternoon delivery of price.
• The London session — 2:00–5:00 AM ET. The range of the European morning.
• The opening range gaps — the 8:30 AM ET open for forex and the 9:30 AM ET open for indices.
• The New York lunch — 12:00–1:30 PM ET. The fallback range, for when the earlier sessions produced nothing.
• The previous day's AM session — 9:30 AM–12:00 PM ET. This is the target, not an entry location: with a bullish bias the target is its high, with a bearish one — its low.

The sequence is always the same: price raids one of the ranges against your bias (a classic Judas Swing), collects the liquidity, then prints an MSS in the direction of the bias — and sets off for the liquidity of yesterday's AM session.

The conditions step by step

The model's morning routine — twelve points:

1. Set your chart to New York time. Every range in the model is defined in NY local time — that's condition zero.
2. Establish the daily bias on D1 and H4: bullish, bearish or neutral (neutral = you don't trade today).
3. Mark the high and low of yesterday's AM session (9:30 AM–12:00 PM ET) — that's your target zone.
4. Mark the previous day's PM session range (1:30–4:00 PM ET).
5. Mark the current day's London session range (2:00–5:00 AM ET).
6. After 1:30 PM ET, mark the lunch range (12:00–1:30 PM ET) — only once the period has closed.
7. Note the opening gap, if there is one (8:30 AM ET forex, 9:30 AM ET indices).
8. Wait for the first raid against the bias. Bullish bias — a raid below the low of one of the ranges (sell-side). Bearish bias — a raid above a high (buy-side).
9. Wait for an MSS on the M5 or M1 in the direction of the bias, after the raid.
10. Enter on the retest of the PD Array zone created by the MSS (an FVG, an order block).
11. Stop: beyond the extreme of the raid, with a small buffer.
12. Target: the liquidity of yesterday's AM session. Bullish bias — its high; bearish — its low. Partials along the way at equal highs/lows.

The order in which you check the ranges follows a cascade logic: first you look at whether the game starts with the PM session (if price is near its range), then whether London gets raided at the NY open, then the opening gap, and the lunch is the last resort — the window for days when nothing has happened by 12:00 PM ET. With an opening gap and a bearish bias, the model tells you to wait until around lunch: the algorithm builds liquidity in the morning, and the real move comes after 1:30 PM ET, when price pushes up into the gap and only then sells off.

The overriding rule: the first opportunity wins. Once one session delivers a clean trade, the rest of the day is monitoring — not more entries.

A worked example

EUR/USD, bullish bias from the daily (price above a daily order block, the nearest draw on liquidity above the high of yesterday's AM session). In the morning you mark the ranges: yesterday's AM and PM, and today's London (2:00–5:00 AM ET).

The London session builds a 20-pip range. At 8:35 AM ET, just after the New York forex open, price dives below the London low — a raid of sell-side liquidity, exactly against the bullish bias. On the M5, two candles later, a bullish impulse prints, breaking the last bearish swing high and leaving an FVG — MSS confirmed.

Long entry on the retest of that gap at 8:50 AM ET, stop 3 pips below the bottom of the raid. Target: the high of yesterday's AM session, 35 pips higher. Along the way, at the equal highs from the Asian session, half the position comes off. The rest reaches the target at 10:40 AM ET — in the middle of the New York killzone, before lunch slows the market down. One trade, in line with the map, closed before 11:00 AM ET.

Managing the position after entry is part of the model too: the first partial at the nearest equal highs or lows, stop to breakeven once half is booked, and the remainder rides to the AM target. If price hasn't reached the target by the end of the AM killzone (around 10:30–11:00 AM ET), it's worth considering a manual close — once the lunch begins, the odds of the target being delivered drop off noticeably.

An honest note: there are days when no range gets raided in line with the bias, and days when the raid comes but the MSS doesn't — then there is no trade. The frequency of opportunities depends on volatility: in trending weeks the model can produce a setup four days out of five, in ranging weeks — one or none. A setup "for life" does not mean "a trade every day of your life."

Who it's for and what to trade it on

The model requires presence at the chart in specific windows — above all 8:00–11:00 AM ET (the NY open and the AM killzone), optionally 2:00–5:00 AM ET (London). For a trader in Europe that's workable even alongside a job: the key window falls in the local afternoon. Compared with One Shot One Kill it offers more opportunities (potentially daily), but demands more screen time and faster decisions.

Instruments: anything that respects the rhythm of the New York session — GBP/USD, EUR/USD, USD/CAD, the NQ and ES indices, gold. The strongest execution slot is the 9:50–10:10 AM ET macro window, where algorithmic delivery is at its most concentrated. On BTC and ETH the session ranges exist as well — the crypto market has a distinct "NY pulse" these days — but they are less sharply defined than on instruments with a physical session open; treat that as a hypothesis to test yourself, not a given. You can draw the five rectangles by hand every day — or let our SRL indicator overlay the session ranges and PD Array zones on the chart for you.

It's also worth tying the model to the macro calendar: the 8:30 AM ET releases — CPI, NFP, GDP — regularly deliver the raid of the London range, and the 2:00 PM ET FOMC can invalidate any map of the day. On big release days it's wiser to wait for the first reaction to print than to sit in the market while the spread blows out by a dozen or more pips. And keep a journal split by range: after a few dozen plays you'll see which raid — London, the opening gap or the lunch — actually pays on your instrument.

Most common mistakes

• The wrong time zone. Ranges in your broker's server time or your local time are different ranges. The model works exclusively on NY local time — it's mistake number one and the easiest to avoid.
• Trading the first raid that prints. The raid must be against the bias (and thereby open the move in its direction). A buy-side raid with a bullish bias is a hunt for your stops, not an entry signal.
• Skipping the MSS. The session range is a trigger zone — the entry is only the MSS after the raid plus the retest. Entering on the bare tap of a session level is guessing at tops and bottoms.
• Marking the lunch early. The 12:00–1:30 PM ET range is valid only AFTER 1:30 PM ET. A range drawn at 12:30 is a range half-built.
• Targeting today's AM session. The target is the liquidity of YESTERDAY'S AM session, not today's. This detail trips up a surprising number of people.
• Trading every raid, every day. The model is a "first opportunity wins" framework. A second and third trade in the same day is no longer One Trade Setup — it's overtrading with a nicer name.

Is it really a "setup for life"? In the sense that the raid → MSS → target sequence has been repeating in the market for decades — yes. In the sense of "you don't need to know anything else" — of course not: the model stands on the quality of your daily bias and the discipline of your execution, and neither can be copied out of an article. Before you start, master the daily bias, the Judas Swing and the MSS — then test the model across a few dozen days of history before you put your first real position on it.

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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