ICT Weekly Profiles — 12 Weekly Patterns and the Tuesday Low

If the trading day has its repeatable scenarios, does the week have them too? According to ICT — yes, and exactly twelve of them. Weekly profiles describe how price typically "delivers" from Monday to Friday: on which day the weekly low likes to form, on which the high, and after what sequence of consolidation and manipulation. The most famous of them is the classic Tuesday low of the week in an uptrend — a pattern that, once seen on your own charts, is hard to unsee. In this article we walk through all twelve profiles and show how to turn them from a curiosity into a frame for planning the entire week.

What Are Weekly Profiles

A weekly profile is a framework pattern for the course of a single trading week. Each profile has three attributes: the day on which the weekly extreme forms, the direction of the dominant move, and the higher-timeframe condition that makes the profile probable. That condition is almost always the position of price relative to the premium and discount zones: if an untouched discount zone waits below price and the weekly context is bullish, the market "has a reason" to dip — and a profile with an early-week low becomes the base scenario.

Two caveats in the no-nonsense spirit. First, profiles are tendencies, not prophecies — in any given week price may realize none of them, and you always run risk management as if your read could be wrong. Second, a profile is recognized gradually: by Monday evening you can at most rule out a few patterns, and the resolution usually only arrives on Tuesday and Wednesday. Whoever "knows" on Monday morning which profile is playing — is guessing.

The logic behind the profiles is the same logic as at the daily scale: the week too has its accumulation, manipulation and distribution. Monday is often a day of positioning and false moves, Tuesday–Wednesday the days of manipulation into the target zone (where the weekly extreme forms), and the rest of the week — delivery of the real direction.

The 12 Profiles — a Map of the Week

Profiles 1–2: the Tuesday classic. In an uptrend the market often manipulates on Monday — it churns just above the higher-timeframe discount zone without reaching it. On Tuesday, usually during the London or New York session, comes the dip into the zone — and that is the weekly low, from which the real expansion launches. The pattern works because Monday's "falling short" leaves both liquidity and an untouched target level below price: the market has somewhere to go and something to go for. Profile 2 is the mirror in a downtrend — a Tuesday rally into premium and the weekly high.

Profiles 3–4: the Wednesday version. The same mechanics, except the manipulation lasts two days (Monday and Tuesday) and the descent into the zone comes on Wednesday. Recognition hint: if by Tuesday's close the target zone is still untouched, the scenario rolls over to Wednesday.

Profiles 5–6: the Thursday reversals. Consolidation from Monday through Wednesday, and then on Thursday the market pierces the extreme of the week's range so far, collects the stops and turns violently. The catalyst is often news — ICT points to around 2:00 PM New York time, the typical hour of interest-rate announcements. Without knowing the calendar this move looks random; with the calendar — like a profile executing on schedule.

Profiles 7–8: midweek expansion. After arriving from a significant zone, the market consolidates for a few days without any opposing price action — and then simply continues: it breaks the weekly range and expands into Friday. Here the weekly extreme forms at the beginning (the Monday low in the bullish version), and the week is one trend leg.

Profiles 9–10: Seek & Destroy. The anti-profiles. The market is waiting for NFP or a rate decision, so from Monday to Thursday it grinds a shallow range, collecting stops on both sides, and only Friday brings the expansion. ICT says it outright: such weeks — especially common in the summer months — should not be traded. Recognizing them in advance isn't a missed opportunity; it's a week of commissions and nerves saved. More in the article on Seek & Destroy.

Profiles 11–12: the big Wednesday reversals. When the market is trading at a long-term low, after a two-day consolidation Wednesday brings a dip into discount that collects the sellers' stops — and from that run on liquidity a strong reversal launches, often ending the entire downtrend. These profiles are rarer, but they have the largest range.

How to Use Weekly Profiles in Your Trading

The Monday-morning routine:

1. Read the context from W1 and D1. The direction of market structure, the position of price relative to the premium/discount zones, untouched target levels above and below price.
2. Shortlist 2–3 candidate profiles — the ones whose ending agrees with the bias and the untouched zones. Bullish bias + discount below price = the candidates: the Tuesday low, the Wednesday low, possibly expansion from Monday.
3. Check the week's calendar. NFP or a rate decision during the week shifts the odds toward the Thursday profiles and Seek & Destroy. This step alone filters out the worst weeks.
4. Set the week's anchor: where and on which day you expect the extreme. This is not a signal — it's the frame within which you execute entries.
5. Execute through the intraday models. If the Tuesday low is in play, you steer Monday's and Tuesday's setups from the intraday profiles toward the discount zone, and once the low is formed you flip direction for the rest of the week. The weekly extreme is usually just the extreme of one of its days — the CBDR and the killzones will show you at what hour it prints.
6. Verify on Wednesday. If by Wednesday's close the expected extreme hasn't formed, the week has most likely shifted to another profile — read it afresh instead of defending the original thesis.

Profiles work best on indices (NQ, ES), major forex pairs (EUR/USD, GBP/USD) and gold. On BTC and ETH the weekly rhythm is visible too — crypto respects the macro calendar and the weekly cycle of institutional liquidity — but remember that 24/7 weekend trading can push the extreme to Saturday–Sunday, which the classic profiles don't cover.

Common Mistakes

• Reading a profile without the premium/discount context. The profiles are anchored in higher-timeframe zones. Without marking them you're not choosing a profile — you're drawing one at random.
• Forcing a profile on Monday. After the first day of the week most patterns are still possible. Attaching to one read too early is the shortest route to ignoring contrary evidence.
• Trading Seek & Destroy weeks. Profiles 9–10 are low quality by definition. The right play is a pause, not "trading the chaos harder."
• Blindness to Thursday 2:00 PM ET. The reversals of profiles 5–6 arrive with late-session New York news. Without the calendar you'll mistake a scheduled manipulation for a failure of your own analysis.
• Treating a profile as a guarantee. The twelve patterns describe tendencies. You set the stop loss and position size as if the week might realize none of them.
• Skipping the connection to the lower timeframes. The profile says "a Tuesday low in discount" — but the entry itself is executed by the daily models. A weekly frame without intraday execution is analysis without a trade.

Weekly profiles close ICT's time pyramid: the week points to the day, the daily profile points to the session, the killzone points to the hour, and the macro — to the minutes. Before you start trading any of it, though, do what you should do with every time concept: scroll back through the last twenty weeks on your market and mark which day printed the weekly extreme. The frequency of Tuesdays and Wednesdays on that list is the best evidence you'll ever find — because you counted it yourself.

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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