Previous Week Highs and Lows as ICT Liquidity Targets

The previous week’s high is 46 pips away, but your entry has only eight pips of clear space before a nearer opposing array. Calling the weekly high a draw on liquidity does not give the order ticket another 38 pips of room.

Weekly extremes are valuable because they stay fixed for several sessions. That same persistence makes it easy to keep an outdated target on the chart long after the original route has changed. The aim here is to decide when a weekly extreme belongs in the background and when it can support a specific intraday plan.

Definition and chart context: previous week’s extremes

Mark last week’s high at 1.10273. Monday makes a high of 1.10194, Tuesday reaches 1.10267 and Wednesday prints 1.10279. A trader watching a compressed weekly chart sees one neat visit. A desk responsible for Tuesday’s trade faces an unvisited high, only 0.6 pip away at the closest bid, and cannot book Wednesday’s subsequent move as Tuesday’s fill.

For the ICT background, see Defining Open Float Liquidity Pools. The worksheets below use stated study rules for measurement, confirmation and simulated fills. Those choices let you reproduce the examples; they are not claims that a public candle identifies the owner, size or intent of an institutional order.

Why this distinction matters

A weekly high can serve as external liquidity relative to an intraday range while remaining internal to a larger monthly range. That is not a contradiction. The reference frame changed. Write which range contains your objective and which range supplies the execution stop. Without that distinction, a valid weekly thesis can be used to excuse an intraday entry that was invalidated hours ago.

How to identify it before the next candle

Check the weekly candle against its constituent daily sessions. Decide whether Sunday quotes and an early holiday close belong to that trading week in your feed. Freeze the completed weekly high and low before the new week opens. Annotate the first subsequent penetration, including the quote side. If Monday has already traded beyond the old high, Tuesday cannot offer the first approach to an untouched weekly high.

Define the weekly interval explicitly. A week containing a holiday still ends at the chosen boundary; short duration is a property of the observation, not a reason to join it to the following week. One way to study the effect is to tag shortened weeks, report both subsets, and see whether the count of eligible intraday approaches changes materially.

Separating a weekly destination from an intraday exit

Take a completed week with a high of 1.10738 and a low of 1.09574. On Tuesday the bid is 1.10368, leaving 37.0 pips to the old high. An intervening four-hour opposing area begins at 1.10481, only 11.3 pips away. These are two distances, not two names for one target. Before any entry, decide whether the position is meant to exit before the first area or whether continuation through it is a separately tested condition. A successful touch of the weekly high three days later does not prove that a Tuesday stop survived.

Draw a second line at the closest opposing intraday dealing area. Ask whether a planned exit there has enough room even if the larger weekly destination never trades. If the answer depends on skipping every intermediate obstacle, the weekly label is doing more work than the execution evidence.

How to trade the idea in a paper replay

Map the route in stages. The nearest opposing intraday array is the first decision point; the old weekly boundary is a possible further destination. A trade can be sensible with an interim exit even when the complete weekly move never occurs. Conversely, a large theoretical reward to the weekly level cannot rescue an entry whose intended nearer exit leaves too little room after costs.

The two replays use constructed five-minute candles and a controlled order model shared across this workbook series. Keeping the execution pattern comparable lets you isolate what the featured concept changes: the reference, the eligibility decision, or the management rule. These selected paths illustrate mechanics. They are not historical signals or a sample from which to estimate a winning percentage.

A session clock you can reconstruct in Accra

Start by writing the clock in the margin. Accra uses GMT throughout the year. A session definition expressed in New York time moves by one hour on a Ghana clock when New York enters or leaves daylight saving time. A session expressed in London local time follows London instead. European and US changes need not occur on the same weekend. A saved template labelled London is not evidence of which clock its author used.

For a concrete conversion, take a New York clock reading of 02:00. In US standard time Accra reads 07:00; in US daylight time it reads 06:00. Thus a 02:00 to 05:00 New York London Kill Zone appears as 07:00 to 10:00 GMT in winter or 06:00 to 09:00 in summer. The 07:00 to 10:00 New York window becomes noon to 15:00 GMT in winter and 11:00 to 14:00 in summer. A school worksheet that deliberately uses fixed GMT hours is a different convention. Label it as such.

The same conversion places New York midnight at 05:00 GMT in winter or 04:00 GMT in summer. That is not the start of every broker day. A vendor using a New York close day can start a new trading day in the Ghana evening, hours before the New York midnight reference. One vertical line cannot quietly serve as both boundaries. If your session crosses midnight locally, write the full date on both ends rather than treating the interval as a negative number of hours.

Before replay, find one known UTC timestamp on the feed. Compare it with the platform clock and the intended market clock, then check another date in the opposite season. Record the opening timestamp of the first included bar and the first excluded bar. This makes a session marking portable: a trader opening the same feed in Kumasi and another using a different display timezone should select the same physical quotes. For the paired illustrations in this lesson, timestamps use a standard-time practice clock.

Check seasonal offsets against the Ghana clock record and the New York clock record for the year being tested. Keep historical observations on their original date.

Reading Friday’s unfinished weekly candle

On Friday morning, the current week’s high and low may look settled because most of the weekly candle is behind you. They are still developing extrema. Last week’s finished high and low remain fixed for this worksheet until the week ends under the declared session template. Avoid moving the old lines when the new candle begins to look more relevant; add a separately named developing level if your study needs one.

Suppose the old weekly high trades on Monday, remains overhead on Tuesday’s cropped chart, and appears visually attractive again on Friday. It may continue to matter as a historical area. It is no longer a fresh previous-week high waiting for its first visit. A leading question such as which weekly level remains unvisited produces a different shortlist from which historical levels might attract a response today.

Separate weeks that open outside the prior week’s range. If the first reliable quote is already beyond an old boundary, the market did not give an observable continuous path from inside to outside on your feed. Mark opened beyond rather than timing a fictional sweep at the old boundary. You can still study re-entry into the range, but the required evidence is different.

If the week spans a long holiday closure, record the last quote before the closure and the first afterward. A stop simulation that treats every price between them as tradable can make an intraday plan look much safer than it was. The weekly map describes price location; only the finer execution record can describe the order.

Worked replay A: The old weekly low is in reach

The last completed week’s low is 1.08952. Price begins the session on its interior side, only 5.4 pips away. On the weekly chart that separation is barely visible. On the entry chart it is large enough to distinguish trading toward the old boundary from taking a new trade after it has been visited.

The excursion to 1.08929 now puts the weekly objective in the history column. The proposed return trade has a different destination at 1.09180; do not recycle the already visited weekly print as justification for the new position. The interim reaction near 1.09101 belongs in the management notes even if the plan holds through it.

Reconstruct the decision before reading the outcome

Cover the candles to the right of 07:25. On this EUR/USD bid chart the test candle opens at 1.08983, trades down to 1.08929 and ends at 1.08959. The close tells you that bids recovered part of the excursion. It does not yet tell you that anyone bought a particular number of lots, or that the prior short-term high will give way. Mark the low as an observation and leave the order field blank.

Now reveal the candle beginning 07:35. Its close at 1.09051 is above the earlier pivot at 1.09028. This is the completed break used by the exercise. Look two candles apart: the high of the bar beginning 07:30 is 1.08988 and the low of the bar beginning 07:40 is 1.09014. Their separation forms the bullish fair value gap in this model. One strong green candle alone would not establish those two outside prices.

A resting buy at their midpoint, 1.09001, can first be submitted at 07:45 under a next-bar convention. The 07:40 candle is named for its opening time, so its low cannot supply a fill for an order that depends on its close. This matters whenever the same screenshot appears to show both confirmation and a cheap entry. Write the order time before revealing the next low, not after finding a favourable one.

Assume a constant 0.6-pip spread throughout this small slice. On the return, bid reaches 1.08979 and the corresponding ask reaches 1.08985. The latter is at or below the requested buy price. We book 1.09001 as the fill, with no price improvement, no delay after activation and enough available size. Those are transparent simulation assumptions. A real candle, even from the correct side of the spread, is not a broker’s confirmation.

What the order would risk in cash

Give the practice account a USD balance of 1400. Its hypothetical cap of one half of one percent is $7.00 for this decision. For a USD-quoted pair with a 100,000-unit standard contract, one pip at one standard lot is $10. Adding 0.4 pip for assumed round-trip commission and other execution friction gives $84.00 of modelled downside at one lot. The spread is already present in the entry and exit quote rules and is not charged a second time.

Divide $7.00 by $84.00 and round down to the next permitted hundredth of a lot. That leaves 0.08 lots, risking about $6.72 under these assumptions. A gap or worse stop fill can exceed that number. Position sizing changes the money exposed; it cannot turn a missing confirmation into a valid entry. When the minimum tradable size exceeds the cap, the worksheet records a pass.

Change just one fact

If the previous trading week included a gap in your feed near its apparent low, classify the level as provisional. You might still have enough evidence for an intraday setup based on the small swing. It cannot enter a sample whose headline claim requires a verified weekly extreme. Save the local opportunity as a separately labelled observation.

Worked replay B: The old weekly high is in reach

The last completed week’s high is 1.26873. Price begins the session on its interior side, only 6.6 pips away. On the weekly chart that separation is barely visible. On the entry chart it is large enough to distinguish trading toward the old boundary from taking a new trade after it has been visited.

The excursion to 1.26893 now puts the weekly objective in the history column. The proposed return trade has a different destination at 1.26522; do not recycle the already visited weekly print as justification for the new position. The interim reaction near 1.26689 belongs in the management notes even if the plan holds through it.

Audit the short from the exit side of the quote

Read the second tape independently. The 07:15 bid high is 1.26893. By the end of the bar starting 07:25, bid has closed at 1.26751, below the pre-existing pivot at 1.26777. The workbook calls that downward displacement. It does not require a guess about which institution initiated the move. The mark is useful because a different reviewer can identify the same closing price on the same feed.

The low of the 07:20 candle is 1.26824 and the high of the 07:30 candle is 1.26802. The later high remains below the earlier low, leaving a bearish execution gap between them. Halving this interval gives 1.26813. A sell limit resting there becomes eligible only after 07:30 has finished. When bid subsequently reaches 1.26840 the paper order can fill at its stated price. No favourable slippage is credited.

It is tempting to score this short from the lowest red wick, because that is what the bid chart displays. The position actually has to buy back. With an assumed spread of 0.7 pip, an ask target at 1.26522 requires a bid at or below 1.26515. An ask stop at 1.26912 needs only a bid at or above 1.26905. Marking these two conversions before scoring prevents a one-spread error on both exits.

Keep the original order record even when the outcome is obvious from the last candle. A reviewer needs the decision price, the reference quote and the activation time, not just a screenshot captioned “short”. If the platform would have rejected a resting order this close to market, or the feed lacks quotes in the return interval, the correct response is to change the fill status. It is not to claim a market execution at the old limit price.

Score the path, then challenge the assumption

The deciding candle opens at 07:50. Its bid range is 1.26836 to 1.26920. With the assumed spread, the ask range is 1.26843 to 1.26927. The upper stop is reached before the other exit without requiring a guess about two exits inside this bar. A later movement cannot reverse a booked exit. In particular, a later visit to the original target would not repair a prior stop.

Increase the estimated round-trip friction by another half pip as a sensitivity check, while leaving entry, stop and target fills fixed. Planned risk:reward becomes 1:2.51, obtained by dividing 27.9 pips of possible net reward by 11.1 pips of downside. This answers a cost question only. If widening the actual bid/ask spread changes whether an order is triggered, reconstruct the path instead of merely reducing the result by a fee.

Change just one fact

If the previous trading week included a gap in your feed near its apparent high, classify the level as provisional. You might still have enough evidence for an intraday setup based on the small swing. It cannot enter a sample whose headline claim requires a verified weekly extreme. Save the local opportunity as a separately labelled observation.

What can go wrong in the review?

A high left behind before a broker symbol change or a futures contract adjustment may not share the same price basis as current bars. Spot pairs normally have no futures roll, but a chart labelled EUR futures is not a spot pair. Keep the original instrument and data convention in the note.

Reader exercise: Does the old weekly high remain beyond the current bid?

Try the following classification without using profit or loss as a clue. Measure the weekly high minus the highest subsequent bid. For this worksheet, the value must be at least 0.1 pips. Also require this separate fact: both the preceding week and the new week to date are observed. These are conditions for admitting a row to a study. They do not replace the order trigger, size calculation or exit plan. The six records are constructed cases, not a report of observed market frequencies.

Cover the answer column and decide which facts you would request before admitting each record. A passes the numerical test at 1.7 pips and has the other required evidence. B has the other evidence but measures -0.4 pips. Under the stated rule that is enough to exclude B. A clean-looking reaction after B cannot change the comparison weekly high minus the highest subsequent bid ≥ 0.1. If you want to study a wider definition, write it as a new version and rerun every observation.

C is the deliberate boundary case. Its value of 0.1 pips equals the threshold. This worksheet uses an inclusive comparison, so C passes. A version that demands strictly more would exclude it. Keep exact prices or timestamps in the original record before rounding for display; values that look equal on a chart may still differ at the feed’s actual precision. The most efficient place to look for a disagreement between two reviewers is often an equality case like this.

D has a smaller value than allowed, so it fails even though the separate prerequisite is unknown. E demonstrates the opposite error: the measured 0.6 pips is acceptable, but the prerequisite is known to be false. F lacks the numerical evidence and its remaining condition is satisfied. There is no basis to call it either a clean pass or a measured failure. Keeping “unresolved” distinct from “no” preserves what data collection could still settle.

A missing reopening print can turn an apparent untouched objective into an opening gap already beyond it.

Recover the day that produced the number

Go back to the full session tape for the disputed observation. Load enough history to include the session that supplied the reference and the interval between that session and the proposed decision. A screenshot starting at entry can never establish an unvisited level on its own. If your vendor has no bars for part of the interval, preserve the gap in the record. Substituting another feed may be useful as a comparison, but it changes the provenance of the observation.

For this lesson the minimum useful packet is the previous high’s source week and the highest bid since the reopening. Preserve the original precision and include the clock used. If another reader can reproduce the number but not the label, examine the equality rule and prerequisite. If they cannot reproduce the number, settle the input discrepancy first. These are different faults, and only the second can be repaired by retrieving better data.

Use the six rows to test the data process before drawing any market conclusion. Two rows pass, three have a known failure and one is unresolved. Of the five settled records, two pass; among all six the possible pass count is two or three depending on the missing measurement. Neither fraction measures how often a London trade wins. The labels reflect a deliberately chosen exercise, and no trade outcomes were supplied.

A test you can run on unseen sessions

Record hours or sessions to first touch, not merely whether a level was ever revisited. Include weeks that ended with both extremes untouched. That denominator is essential when asking whether the level was useful on an intraday horizon.

Make one dated record for each session you inspect, including those in which the required condition never appears. Keep a count of eligible signals, orders placed, orders filled and positions closed. A result per fill answers a different question from a result per session. Separate them before comparing this rule with another way of reading previous week’s extremes.

Frequently asked questions

To put this worksheet beside a live chart, use the guides to London Kill Zone timing and the Judas Swing to define the session question. Then compare market structure shifts for confirmation, fair value gaps for the return price, and order blocks for the larger area behind the move.