Trading & Crypto

How to Find Trading Entries in 2026 Using the ICC Method

How I Find My Trading Entries | Trading Course 003

Video: How I Find My Trading Entries | Trading Course 003

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· based on the channel SCI

Finding trading entries is a repeatable process, not a feeling: you wait for the market to show its hand, mark the level where the move should continue, and only then execute. The ICC framework used by the SCI channel breaks that process into three stages — Indication, Correction, Continuation — and the entry is taken at the moment the correction ends and the continuation begins. If you want the visual walkthrough of that sequence, the author shares his charts and daily trades on Instagram.

What "finding an entry" actually means in trading

An entry is a decision to accept risk at a specific price because the market has given you a reason to. Most beginners treat entries as the whole game and search for a magic indicator, but an entry is only the last step of a chain: bias, structure, level, trigger. If any link is missing, the entry is a guess.

The practical definition is simple: an entry is valid when price is at a level where the next move in your direction is more likely than the alternative, and where your stop can sit behind a structure that invalidates the idea. That stop placement is what separates a trade from a bet — a bet has no defined invalidation point.

Two consequences follow. First, entries are rare relative to how often price moves; you are not supposed to trade every candle. Second, the quality of an entry is judged by what happens to your stop, not by whether the trade eventually turns green — a badly timed entry can be rescued by luck and still be a bad entry.

The ICC method: Indication, Correction, Continuation

ICC is a three-stage structure model: the market first indicates a direction with an impulse, then corrects against that impulse, and finally continues. The entry lives at the end of stage two, not at the start of stage one.

  1. Indication. Price makes a decisive, one-sided move that breaks a prior swing or a session high/low. This is the market showing intent. The impulse should be clean, not a choppy grind with overlapping candles.
  2. Correction. Price retraces into the area the impulse left behind — an order block, an imbalance, or a previous consolidation. The correction is where you prepare, not where you enter. Its job is to bring price back to a level where the original move is still defensible.
  3. Continuation. Price shows a reaction at that level: a displacement candle, a shift in the short-term structure, or a rejection wick. That reaction is the trigger, and the entry is taken on it with the stop behind the correction extreme.

The reason this sequence produces better entries than chasing the impulse is asymmetry. Entering during the indication means your stop is far away and your reward is already partly spent. Entering at the end of the correction means your stop is tight, your invalidation is objective, and the continuation is still ahead of you.

Reading market structure before you look for an entry

Structure is the skeleton that tells you which direction has the right to be traded. Without it, ICC becomes a pattern you force onto any chart.

Start from the higher timeframe — daily or 4-hour — and mark the most recent swing highs and swing lows. A market making higher highs and higher lows is in an uptrend; lower highs and lower lows is a downtrend; overlapping swings with no progress is a range. Your entries should align with that direction at least until the higher timeframe structure breaks.

Then drop to your execution timeframe, usually 15-minute or 1-hour for intraday work, and ask one question: has this timeframe recently produced an impulse in the same direction as the higher timeframe? If yes, you have a candidate for an ICC setup. If it produced an impulse against the higher timeframe, you are looking at a pullback inside a larger trend, and the correct action is to wait for the higher timeframe level rather than trade the counter-move.

Finally, mark the levels where corrections are likely to end: the origin of the impulse, the 50–61.8% retracement zone, and any session high or low that was broken. These are not entry signals by themselves — they are the places where you watch for the trigger.

Timeframes, sessions and XAUUSD specifics

Entries are time-sensitive because liquidity is time-sensitive. The same setup behaves differently in the Asian session, the London open and the New York open.

For most intraday traders, the London open and the first two hours of New York offer the cleanest impulses and the most reliable corrections, because that is when institutional volume arrives. The Asian session tends to produce ranges, and ranges generate false ICC signals — an impulse that is really just a sweep of thin liquidity.

XAUUSD, gold, is a popular instrument for this style because it moves in clear legs and reacts strongly to session opens. Its volatility is also its risk: a correction on gold can be twice the size of the same correction on a major currency pair, so position size must be adjusted rather than copied across instruments.

A practical rule: if the impulse you are marking was created outside the active session, treat it as a lower-quality indication. If it was created on the session open, with a displacement candle and a broken level, it deserves your attention.

Timing the trigger instead of chasing the move

The trigger is the smallest part of the process and the easiest to get wrong. Waiting for it is what turns a correct idea into a profitable trade.

Signs that a correction is finishing rather than continuing: the retracement slows down and prints smaller candles, price taps a level and immediately rejects it, or a lower-timeframe structure shift occurs — a break of the most recent minor high in the direction of the original impulse. Any of these can serve as your confirmation, provided you defined it before the moment arrived.

Signs that you are entering too early: price is still moving fast against you, the correction has not reached any level you marked, and your only reason is that the move "should" continue. Signs that you are entering too late: the continuation candle is already extended, and your stop would have to sit far enough away that the reward-to-risk ratio drops below your minimum.

Decide your minimum reward-to-risk before the session, not during it. If the setup at the level you marked cannot offer that ratio, the correct answer is no trade — there will be another correction.

Risk, emotion and the mistakes that survive a good entry

A correct entry does not protect you from bad risk management, and the traders who fail after learning entries almost always fail here. Risk per trade should be a fixed fraction of the account, small enough that a losing streak does not change your behaviour. If your size changes after two losses, your process is already broken.

Emotional mistakes show up in predictable forms: moving the stop to avoid being wrong, adding to a loser because the level "held before", and taking a counter-trend trade immediately after missing a valid one. Each of these is a reaction to the previous trade rather than a reading of the current market.

The fix is mechanical. Write the entry, stop and target before you click, and treat any change to those numbers as a separate decision that needs its own reason. Journal every trade with a screenshot of the moment you entered, then review whether the correction had actually finished — over a few dozen trades, the pattern in your mistakes becomes obvious.

Common questions traders ask about entries

Most recurring doubts are about confidence rather than mechanics. Traders understand the three stages and still hesitate, or take the setup on the wrong instrument, or misjudge how much of the move is already gone.

A useful habit is to separate the question "is this a valid setup?" from "do I feel like trading right now?". The first is answered by the chart and your rules; the second is noise. If the setup is valid and the risk is defined, hesitation is a discipline problem, not an analysis problem.

Another common issue is instrument choice: a setup that works on gold may be too slow or too noisy on a low-volatility pair, and vice versa. Keep a short list of instruments you actually track, and learn how each one behaves around session opens instead of jumping between markets.

Final thoughts on building a repeatable entry process

Entries are the visible tip of a process that is mostly waiting, marking and refusing. The ICC sequence — indication, correction, continuation — gives that waiting a structure, and structure is what makes a decision repeatable across hundreds of trades instead of a one-off guess. Timeframe alignment and session awareness decide whether the setup is worth taking at all, while stop placement and fixed risk decide whether a good idea survives a bad week. The SCI channel builds its trading course around exactly this progression, moving from structure to entries to execution, and the Instagram page at https://www.instagram.com/tradesbysci is where the setups are shown on live charts. Treat any single entry as one sample of a long process, and judge yourself on whether you followed the rules rather than on whether that one trade worked.

Key takeaways

  • Entries are taken only after structure confirms: first the impulse, then the correction, then the continuation.
  • The ICC framework stands for Indication, Correction, Continuation — three stages that must all appear before a trade is valid.
  • XAUUSD is the instrument most often used for these setups because it respects session liquidity and produces clean legs.
  • Entry timing matters more than direction: the same idea taken early or late turns a winning edge into a losing one.
  • Risk management and emotional control are the two factors most often named by traders who blow up after learning entries.

Source: How I Find My Trading Entries | Trading Course 003 · Markdown version

Questions & answers

How do I know a correction is finished and not just pausing?

Look for a reaction at a level you marked in advance: slowing momentum, smaller candles, a rejection wick, or a shift in the lower-timeframe structure. If price is still moving fast against the impulse and has not reached any level you identified, the correction is probably not finished. The confirmation must be defined before the moment arrives, not invented while you watch.

Why do my entries work on some instruments but not others?

Volatility and liquidity differ, so the same structure produces different corrections. Gold can retrace twice as far as a major currency pair, and a setup that looks clean on one instrument may be noise on another. Keep a short list of markets you track and adjust position size to the instrument rather than copying the same size everywhere.

I understand the setup but still hesitate when the trigger appears. What helps?

Separate the analysis question from the emotional one. If the setup matches your rules and the risk is defined, hesitation is a discipline issue, not a signal to re-analyse. Writing the entry, stop and target before clicking, and journaling each trade with a screenshot, makes the hesitation visible and easier to correct over time.

Can I trade these entries outside the London and New York sessions?

You can, but expect lower-quality indications. The Asian session often produces ranges, and ranges generate impulses that are really just sweeps of thin liquidity. If your impulse was created outside an active session, treat it as a weaker setup and demand a cleaner confirmation before risking the same amount.

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