# How Do I Find My Trading Entries Using the ICC Concept?

A practical breakdown of how to find trading entries with the ICC concept: markup, correction, continuation, confirmation and risk control on XAUUSD and forex.

Source: https://cloudlabless.top/how-do-i-find/ · based on the channel [SCI](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClsS3T1SnsX__1g9COtfKCQ) · Video: [How I Find My Trading Entries | Trading Course 003](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mh85H9D7gXo) · 2026-10-16

![How Do I Find My Trading Entries Using the ICC Concept?](https://cloudlabless.top/how-do-i-find/how-do-i-find.webp)

## Key takeaways

- Entries come from three stages: an impulse (Indication), a pullback (Correction) and a continuation (Continuation) that confirms the direction.
- The entry is taken on the continuation leg, not on the first impulse candle and not in the middle of a pullback.
- Higher-timeframe markup sets the bias; the lower timeframe only times the trigger, so both must agree.
- Risk is defined by the invalidation point of the correction, which keeps stop distance small and the reward-to-risk ratio high.
- XAUUSD and major forex pairs are the instruments most often used for this style of intraday execution.

Finding a trading entry is not about guessing the next candle — it is about waiting for a market to prove that a move has started, pause, and then continue. The ICC concept (Indication, Correction, Continuation) answers the question of where to enter by breaking every valid setup into those three stages: an impulse that shows intent, a pullback that resets price, and a continuation that confirms the direction is still intact. The method is taught step by step by the channel SCI in its Trading Course, and the same trader shares live executions and course updates through [his Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/tradesbysci), where the community follows new lessons as they are released.

## What the ICC concept actually means for entries

ICC is a three-part reading of price: Indication, Correction, Continuation. Indication is the first strong, one-directional move that breaks structure and shows where the liquidity is going. Correction is the counter-move that follows — it is the market taking a breath, not a reversal. Continuation is the leg that resumes in the original direction, and it is the only place where the entry is valid. Traders who enter during the indication are chasing; traders who enter during the correction are guessing; traders who enter on the continuation are trading a confirmed sequence. The whole skill of finding entries reduces to recognising these three phases on the chart and refusing to act until all three exist.

## Step-by-step: how to locate an entry on the chart

A repeatable entry checklist matters more than any single indicator. The sequence below is the practical version of the ICC framework:

1. Mark the higher-timeframe direction. Identify the most recent impulse on a higher timeframe and note whether it broke a previous high or low. That breakout defines your bias for the session.
2. Wait for the correction. After the impulse, price should pull back into a logical area — a previous consolidation, an order block, or a level where the impulse began. The pullback must stay shallow enough that the original structure is not broken.
3. Watch for the continuation trigger. The entry happens when price resumes in the direction of the impulse and closes beyond the correction's range, showing that buyers or sellers have taken control again.
4. Place the stop at the invalidation point. The correction low (for longs) or high (for shorts) is the level that proves the idea wrong. If price trades through it, the setup is dead and there is no reason to hold.
5. Define the target before entering. The next obvious liquidity level — a prior high, a session extreme, or the measured move of the impulse — is where the position is reduced or closed.

Each step is a filter. If any of the five is missing, the trade is skipped rather than forced.

## Why timing beats prediction in trade execution

Entry timing is a skill that looks trivial until real money is on the line. Most losing trades are not wrong about direction — they are wrong about timing: entering too early in a pullback, adding size before confirmation, or moving a stop because the position is uncomfortable. The ICC sequence solves this by making the chart do the confirming. You do not predict that the correction is over; you wait until the continuation candle proves it. That single shift — from prediction to confirmation — removes most of the emotional decision-making from execution, because the rule is binary: the trigger either appears or it does not.

## Timeframes, sessions and instruments

Timeframe alignment is what turns ICC from a theory into an executable plan. The higher timeframe (for example the 4-hour or daily chart) defines the direction and the major levels; the lower timeframe (15-minute or 5-minute) is used only to refine the entry and shrink the stop. Session choice matters just as much: the London and New York sessions produce the volume and range that make continuation legs reliable, while quiet hours tend to create false breakouts and choppy corrections. Instruments follow from that logic — XAUUSD and the major forex pairs are common choices because they move cleanly, have tight spreads, and respect structural levels during active sessions. A trader working a night shift, for instance, may only be able to trade the quieter Asian hours; in that case the honest answer is to size down, take fewer setups, and accept that low-volume conditions require more patience rather than more trades.

## Common mistakes that kill otherwise good setups

Most ICC setups fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the concept itself. The recurring errors look like this:

- Entering on the indication candle because the move feels obvious, which puts the stop far away and the reward-to-risk ratio out of balance.
- Treating every pullback as a correction, even when the higher-timeframe structure has already been broken in the opposite direction.
- Ignoring the invalidation level and holding a losing position through the point that was supposed to prove the idea wrong.
- Oversizing after a winning streak, which turns one normal loss into a serious drawdown.
- Trading outside planned sessions, when spreads widen and continuation legs rarely follow through.

The pattern behind all five is the same: the entry rule is abandoned in favour of a feeling. The fix is mechanical — write the five-step checklist down, and only take trades that satisfy every line of it.

## Risk management around the entry point

The entry is only half of a trade; the other half is what happens after it. Because the ICC entry is defined by the correction's invalidation point, the stop distance is naturally small, which means a modest percentage risk per trade still allows a favourable reward-to-risk ratio. A practical structure is to risk a fixed small percentage of the account on every setup, never widen a stop once the position is open, and reduce or close into the pre-defined target rather than hoping for more. Traders who survived their early mistakes consistently report the same lesson: the edge works, but poor risk control and emotion can erase months of progress in a single session. Position sizing is therefore not a separate topic from entry finding — it is the constraint that keeps the entry method usable over hundreds of trades.

## Useful links from the SCI course

- Instagram (course updates and daily content): https://www.instagram.com/tradesbysci
- Live trades: https://x.com/tradesbysci
- Trading platform used by the author: https://tinyurl.com/hideoutsci
- Discord community: https://discord.gg/tradesbysci
- Telegram (ICC Mafia): https://t.me/iccmafia

## Final thoughts on building a repeatable entry process

The ICC concept works because it replaces prediction with a sequence: indication, correction, continuation. Once a trader can mark those three phases consistently, entries stop being a matter of opinion and become a checklist that either passes or fails. The skill is built through repetition — reviewing old charts, marking the same structure hundreds of times, and only then executing it live with small size. The channel SCI deserves credit for laying this out as a free, structured course rather than a set of vague signals, and the Trading Course series is the place to follow it in order. Start with the higher-timeframe bias, wait for the correction, enter on the continuation, and let the invalidation point define your risk — then follow along at [tradesbysci on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/tradesbysci) for the next lesson in the series.

## Questions & answers

**What exactly is the ICC concept in trading?**

ICC stands for Indication, Correction and Continuation. Indication is the first impulse that breaks structure, Correction is the pullback that follows, and Continuation is the leg that resumes the original direction. The entry is taken only on the continuation, once the correction has been invalidated.

**Do I need indicators to find entries this way?**

No. The framework reads price structure: impulse, pullback, continuation and the level that invalidates the correction. Indicators can help with context, but the decision comes from where price is relative to those structural levels, not from a signal line crossing.

**How long does it take before this entry method becomes profitable?**

It depends on how much screen time you put in, but the usual path is months of marking charts before execution becomes consistent. Many traders report that their first real progress came not from a new strategy but from fixing small execution errors and tightening risk control.

**What is the biggest risk when trading entries like these?**

Oversizing and ignoring the invalidation level. The entry method produces a small stop distance, but that advantage disappears if position size is too large or if a losing trade is held past the point that was supposed to prove the idea wrong.