Most retail traders approach the market one day at a time, or one trade at a time. They look at the current candle, the current session, maybe yesterday’s high and low, and make a decision. ICT’s weekly profile concept asks you to step back further and read the market at the level of the full trading week, because the week is the unit of time at which institutional order flow is most consistently planned and delivered.
Institutions do not plan their positions around the next H1 candle. They plan around the week. Their accumulation happens early in the week. Their manipulation and distribution happen mid-week. Their profit taking rounds off the week. When you can identify which weekly profile is forming in the first one or two days, you gain a framework that tells you which direction to trade for the entire week, where the weekly high and low are most likely to form, and on which days the best kill zone entries are available.
Why Institutions Plan at the Weekly Level
The weekly timeframe matters because of how large institutional participants operate. Portfolio managers, macro hedge funds, and central bank trading desks do not make decisions based on 15-minute candles. Their position sizing, risk models, and execution windows are built around weekly and monthly time horizons. The forex week runs from Sunday’s 5 PM EST open to Friday’s 5 PM EST close, a defined, repeating unit that institutional desks use to plan entry and exit windows.
The practical consequence for retail traders is that certain price behaviours recur at specific points in the week with enough regularity to be anticipated and traded. Monday frequently produces the range accumulation that will be swept later in the week. Tuesday and Wednesday are the highest-probability kill zone days for significant directional moves. Thursday often continues the Wednesday move or begins a reversal. Friday tends toward consolidation and partial position unwinding before the weekend.
These tendencies are not perfectly reliable every single week, economic data releases, central bank announcements, and geopolitical events can reshape any given week’s profile. But as a probabilistic framework for setting your weekly bias and identifying which days to focus on, the weekly profile is one of the most powerful tools ICT provides.
The Six ICT Weekly Profiles
ICT identifies six primary weekly price profiles, grouped into bullish, bearish, and ranging categories. Each describes a different sequence for when the weekly high and low form relative to each other and relative to the days of the week.
The six ICT weekly profiles. Top row: three bullish delivery patterns varying in when the weekly low forms (Monday, Monday again more sharply, or Wednesday). Bottom row: bearish mirrors of the bullish profiles, plus the ranging/consolidation week. Identifying which profile is forming by Tuesday gives you the rest of the week’s directional framework.
What Each Day of the Week Tends to Do
Within the weekly profile framework, each trading day has characteristic tendencies that hold across most profile types. These are not rules, they are tendencies that raise or lower the probability of specific events on specific days.
| Day | Ghana Time (Kill Zones) | Typical Role in the Week | Setup Quality |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 7-10 AM, 12-3 PM | Range formation and early accumulation. Price often consolidates near the weekly open. The weekly high or low may form on Monday (Profiles 2 and Bearish 2), but more often Monday is building the liquidity pool that Tuesday or Wednesday will target. Do not force Monday setups. Observe and plan. | Medium |
| Tuesday | 7-10 AM, 12-3 PM | One of the two highest-probability trading days of the week. Tuesday frequently produces the manipulation sweep that defines the week’s direction. The weekly low (bullish week) or weekly high (bearish week) often forms on Tuesday’s London or New York Kill Zone. Strong AMD cycles common on Tuesday. | High |
| Wednesday | 7-10 AM, 12-3 PM | The single highest-probability day of the week for significant directional moves. Wednesday is when institutional distribution is most consistently delivered. If you can only trade two days a week, Tuesday and Wednesday are the days. FOMC meetings fall on Wednesdays, these sessions can override the weekly profile with sharp news-driven moves. | Highest |
| Thursday | 7-10 AM, 12-3 PM | Continuation of Wednesday’s move, or the beginning of a reversal toward the weekly close. Thursday frequently produces the secondary move within the weekly profile, if Wednesday delivered the bullish high, Thursday may retrace before Friday’s close. Valid setups available but lower probability than Tuesday-Wednesday. | Medium |
| Friday | 7-10 AM only | Position unwinding and consolidation before the weekend gap risk. Friday afternoon (after noon Ghana time) is particularly low quality as traders close positions. Best practice: take any open trade profits by Thursday close or Friday morning. Do not open new positions Friday afternoon. The NY session on Friday is generally not worth trading. | Avoid PM |
How to Read the Weekly Profile Before Monday
Reading the weekly profile is a Sunday evening or early Monday morning task, before any trading session opens. It requires looking at the weekly chart and the daily chart together to place the current week in its broader context.
- Open the weekly chart on Sunday evening Look at the last three to six completed weekly candles. Are they making higher highs and higher lows (bullish delivery) or lower highs and lower lows (bearish delivery)? This is your macro weekly bias. The current week’s profile will almost certainly align with this macro direction unless a major reversal event is expected.
- Identify the previous week’s high and low Mark the previous week’s high (PWH) and previous week’s low (PWL) as horizontal lines. These are the primary liquidity targets for the current week. On a bullish macro bias, the PWH is the draw on liquidity, the target the current week is likely to reach or exceed. On a bearish macro bias, the PWL is the draw on liquidity.
- Note any significant weekly levels nearby Mark any significant equal highs or equal lows on the weekly chart within 200 to 300 pips of current price. These are high-priority liquidity pools that could be the draw on liquidity for the week or the manipulation sweep before the real move.
- Check the economic calendar for the week Go to Forex Factory and mark all high-impact news events for the week. FOMC (Wednesday), NFP (first Friday of the month), CPI, and central bank meetings all override the weekly profile if they fall within the week. Build your weekly plan around these events, do not trade immediately before a high-impact release.
- Form a working hypothesis for the weekly profile Based on the macro bias, the draw on liquidity, and the news calendar, decide which of the six profiles is most likely. Write it down. “This week looks like Bullish Profile 1, expecting the weekly low to form Tuesday London, then distribution higher Wednesday through Thursday toward the PWH.” This gives you a framework to test against the actual price action as the week develops.
- Update the hypothesis after Monday closes After Monday’s session closes, review what actually happened. Did Monday confirm the accumulation phase of your hypothesised profile? Did it fake a direction? Refine your profile hypothesis. By Tuesday morning, you should have a much clearer picture of which profile is unfolding, which determines your priority for Tuesday’s London Kill Zone.
Classic Bullish Profile 1 mapped across the five trading days. Monday consolidates near the weekly open. Tuesday’s London Kill Zone produces the Judas Swing below the previous week’s low, the weekly low forms here. Entry 1 is taken after the Tuesday Judas close and MSS. Wednesday distributes higher with Entry 2 on the first FVG pullback. Thursday continues. Friday approaches the previous week’s high target. No new entries Friday afternoon.
The Weekly Profile and Daily Bias Working Together
The weekly profile and the daily bias are two levels of the same framework. The weekly profile tells you the direction and timing of the whole week. The daily bias tells you which direction to trade in each individual session. When they align, the setup probability is highest.
In a Classic Bullish Profile 1 week, your daily bias on Tuesday should be bullish, you are expecting the weekly low to form via a Judas Swing, which means the London Kill Zone will sweep the SSL below, close back above it, and then distribute higher all day. The daily bias for Tuesday in this context is unambiguously bullish despite the early session drop. On Wednesday, the daily bias continues bullish as the distribution phase accelerates. On Thursday, the daily bias is still bullish but with caution, since Thursday is where reversals begin. On Friday, the daily bias is neutral, the target has largely been reached and new entries are low probability.
Conflict between the weekly profile and the daily bias is the most common source of confusion for ICT traders reading the weekly. If the weekly profile says bullish but Tuesday opens with a very strong bearish daily candle, you need to reassess whether the profile hypothesis was wrong. The solution is to hold the weekly hypothesis loosely and update it as each day adds information. The profile is a framework, not a certainty, treat it as a probability map, not a script.
A Practical Weekly Preparation Routine
Here is a condensed weekly preparation workflow that a Ghanaian ICT trader can complete on Sunday evening in 30 to 45 minutes:
Step 1, Weekly chart (5 minutes): Look at the last 4 weekly candles on EUR/USD and GBP/USD. Note the direction of the higher-timeframe trend. Mark the previous week’s high and low. Write down the draw on liquidity for the current week.
Step 2, Daily chart (10 minutes): Identify the significant D1 order blocks, FVGs, and equal high/low levels within 200 pips of current price. These are the levels the current week’s AMD cycles will target.
Step 3, Economic calendar (5 minutes): Open Forex Factory, set it to Ghana time (GMT). Mark all red-folder events for the week. Note if FOMC, NFP, or CPI falls this week, if it does, the day of the release takes priority over the weekly profile and normal kill zone entries should be avoided in the hours surrounding the release.
Step 4, Weekly profile hypothesis (5 minutes): Based on Steps 1 and 2, decide which of the six profiles is most likely. Write: “Week of [date]: Bullish Profile 1 expected. Draw on liquidity: PWH at 1.09140. Weekly low expected Tuesday London. Best entry days: Tuesday and Wednesday.”
Step 5, Monday review (10 minutes, Monday evening Ghana): After Monday closes, review whether price confirmed the accumulation phase. Refine the profile hypothesis. Confirm Tuesday’s London Kill Zone as the primary session to watch if the weekly low has not yet formed.
Common Mistakes Reading the Weekly Profile
Committing too early. Many traders decide on the profile by Monday morning and force every price action into that narrative for the rest of the week. If Tuesday opens contrary to your Monday hypothesis, that is new information. Update the profile. A wrong hypothesis held rigidly costs money. A hypothesis updated early saves it.
Ignoring news events. The weekly profile describes institutional delivery in a normal week. An FOMC meeting, NFP release, or unexpected geopolitical event overrides the profile mechanics for that day. Always check the calendar before assuming the weekly profile is operating normally.
Trading against the weekly profile on individual days. If the weekly profile is bullish and Thursday shows a bearish London move, it is almost always a retracement rather than a reversal. Trading bearish on Thursday because Thursday’s candle looked bearish means fighting the weekly direction. The weekly profile keeps you on the right side of the larger move even when individual sessions produce counter-moves.
Treating Friday as a full trading day. Friday’s afternoon session in particular is consistently the lowest quality trading window of the week. The weekly profile may not reach its full target by Friday close, this is not a reason to enter new positions Friday afternoon chasing the target. The target either forms by Thursday or early Friday, or it carries into the following week.
Frequently Asked Questions
The weekly profile connects to several other concepts covered on this site. For the daily-level bias framework that works within the weekly profile, see the Daily Bias guide. For the AMD cycle that delivers each day’s price movement within the week, see the Power of 3 guide. For the kill zone timing that produces the best entries within each profile day, see the London Kill Zone tutorial. Use the Kill Zone Time Converter to confirm Ghana-time windows for each session.