Trade with liquidity — intermediate difficulty
The Wick Theory Strategy is a liquidity-based model that identifies high-probability trade setups by analyzing wicks, which are price attempts that fail and are rejected with aggression by smart money. This strategy is suitable for traders who want to trade with the institutional flow and take advantage of liquidity pools. It can be used in various markets and timeframes, but it is most effective in markets with high liquidity and on timeframes that provide a good balance between precision and structure.
The Wick Theory Strategy can be applied to various financial instruments, including forex, futures, and stocks, and is suitable for trading during different sessions, including the London, New York, and Asian sessions. The strategy works best on timeframes that provide a good balance between precision and structure, such as the 4-hour and 1-hour timeframes.
The Wick Theory Strategy is based on the idea that wicks, which are price attempts that fail and are rejected with aggression by smart money, can be used to identify high-probability trade setups. The strategy involves analyzing wicks in conjunction with liquidity pools to determine the direction of the trade and the placement of the stop loss.
The CE is the 50% midpoint of any PD array, including wicks, and serves as the primary execution zone for this model. To measure it, apply a Fibonacci retracement from the wick's extreme tip to the wick's open or close (body boundary). The 0.5 level (50%) is the CE.
The Wick Theory Strategy operates across multiple timeframes, each serving a distinct analytical function. Higher timeframes establish context and bias, while lower timeframes provide entry precision. The 4-hour timeframe is considered the primary analysis timeframe, while the 1-hour timeframe is used for secondary analysis and refinement.
A+ setups require a minimum of three conditions to be present, including liquidity sweep at the wick extreme, engineered liquidity near or below the CE, and at least one of the following conditions: wick taps into imbalance, bias aligns with higher timeframe context, trading toward the draw on liquidity, or SMT divergence present.
Not every wick qualifies as a high-probability trade setup. Setups to avoid include wicks that form at the beginning of an unfilled imbalance, wicks that form equal highs or equal lows themselves, wicks that trade against higher timeframe mitigation, wicks that trade away from the daily open, and wicks that look valid on low timeframes but violate higher timeframe context.
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