ICT Market Maker Buy and Sell Model: How to Trade It in ES and NQ Futures

The ICT Market Maker Model is a way of labeling a price sequence: a range forms, price sweeps one side of it, reverses hard, and travels to the other side. If you can label that sequence while it's forming, you get a defined stop and a defined target. The catch is that the labeling is subjective and nobody outside the model's author has confirmed the story behind it.

What the model claims, and what it can't prove

ICT teaching says that large participants need counterparties to fill big orders, so price is pushed into obvious stop clusters to find them, then reverses. The buy version is called the Market Maker Buy Model (MMBM) and the sell version the Market Maker Sell Model (MMSM). Retail traders can't see institutional order books, so the explanation is an interpretation of the chart, not an observed fact. Treat it as a pattern description to test, and not as proof of who is doing what.

MMBM, phase by phase

1. Original consolidation. Price trades in a range over several sessions with no clear direction.
2. Judas swing. Price breaks below the range low or a visible prior low, trips the stops below it, and draws in breakout sellers.
3. Displacement. A large-bodied move back up reclaims the broken level. It usually leaves a fair value gap (FVG): in a three candle sequence, the space between the first candle's high and the third candle's low that the second candle's body ran through without overlap.
4. Delivery higher. Price travels toward the range high and often toward equal highs or a prior swing high above it.
5. Redistribution or reversal. Price pauses near the target, or the cycle flips into a sell pattern.

The MMSM is the mirror: a range at higher prices, a false break above, displacement lower with an FVG, then travel down.

Where it appears in ES and NQ

On a weekly scale the cycle can take one to three weeks, with the sweep often early in the week, though that's a tendency people describe, not a rule I can show you data for. Intraday, the overnight session sets a range, and a sweep of the overnight high or low can occur around or after the cash open. ICT teachings often cite a New York window of roughly 7:00 to 10:00 am ET. The regular US equity cash open is 9:30 am ET, so decide ahead of time how you define the overnight range and the window. Holiday sessions and early closes don't follow normal hours. CME Globex equity futures typically trade from Sunday 5 pm CT to Friday 4 pm CT with a daily break, but check the CME schedule for the product and date.

What makes a setup worth marking: the sweep took out a level other traders would plainly see (equal highs or lows, prior day extreme), the reversal candle has a large body and small wicks, and the FVG it leaves is clear.

Entries, stops and targets

Three entry styles are taught. One is a limit at the edge of the FVG after displacement. Another is a pullback entry to the reclaimed range boundary. The third is the first higher low on a 5 or 15 minute chart after the sweep (a market structure shift). Earlier entries get a better price but more false starts. Later ones confirm more and give up distance.

The stop goes beyond the sweep extreme. If price returns there, the idea has failed. The first target is the opposite side of the original range and the extended target is the equal highs beyond it.

Worked example (hypothetical numbers)

Suppose ES ranges between 5,000 and 5,025. Price sweeps down to 4,996, reverses and leaves an FVG from 5,003 to 5,005. You buy at 5,005 with a stop at 4,995, one point under the sweep low.

Item	Points	1 ES	1 MES
Risk (5,005 to 4,995)	10	$500	$50
Target 1 (5,025)	20	$1,000	$100
Target 2 (5,040)	35	$1,750	$175

That's 2R to the first target and 3.5R to the second. Those ratios are arithmetic from invented prices. They aren't a typical outcome. Two failure modes are built in. Price may never retrace into the FVG and you miss the move. Or it may fill the gap, take out the stop and keep falling, which means the sweep was the start of a downtrend. Slippage and commissions come off both ends.

Context before the label

The same five minute pattern can be the start of a buy cycle or a pause inside a decline. Check where weekly and daily price sit, which obvious highs and lows are nearby, and whether the range you're calling consolidation is actually a pullback inside a trend. Without that, the label comes after the fact.

How to test it before using it

Mark the pattern live on a chart replay or in sim, with rules written first: how the range is defined, what counts as a sweep, what counts as displacement, where entry and stop sit. Log at least 50 examples, including the ones that failed and the ones you almost took. Record R result, costs and how long each took to resolve. Fifty examples won't prove an edge, and sim fills don't capture real queue position or slippage, but a log of wins and losses under fixed rules tells you more than a screenshot gallery of winners.

If you also want fixed reference prices to compare against sweeps, our KPL page describes levels that stay put for the whole session. They are a separate tool and aren't derived from this model.