Trading & Crypto

Trading entries made simple with the ICC method so you can stop chasing candles and start timing your XAUUSD trades

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

Trading entries are the specific price levels and confirmation candles where you actually commit capital, and the ICC method finds them by waiting for an Indication, a Correction and a Continuation to print in that order before you click buy or sell. Instead of predicting a move, you let the market show you the sequence, then enter on the continuation with a defined stop. SCI walks through exactly this process in the third part of his free trading course, and the full breakdown lives alongside his daily posts at Trades By Sci on Instagram.

Most traders lose money not because they picked the wrong direction, but because they entered at the wrong moment inside a move that was otherwise correct. That gap between being right about the market and being right about the entry is what this course installment attacks.

What the ICC method actually means for entries

ICC is a structure-based way of reading price, not an indicator. It describes how a move typically develops: an Indication shows intent (a strong impulse, a sweep of a level, a break of structure), a Correction pulls back into a zone where the move can be re-loaded, and a Continuation is the expansion that follows. Your entry is the continuation, not the indication.

The practical consequence is that you spend most of your screen time waiting. The indication tells you which direction you are interested in. The correction tells you where. The continuation tells you when. If any of the three is missing, there is no trade — and that single rule removes a large share of the impulsive entries that damage accounts.

Why entry timing beats entry price

A level is not a trade. The same support zone can produce a clean continuation or a straight break, and the difference is almost always in the behaviour of price when it arrives there: how fast it moves, how much it retraces, whether it consolidates or slices through.

That is why two traders can mark the identical level on XAUUSD and get opposite results. One waits for the reaction and enters on confirmation; the other places a limit order and hopes. Entry timing is the skill of reading that reaction in real time, and it is the part of trading that looks trivial in a replay and difficult live.

The pre-session markup routine

The markup is where the trade is actually decided, before any money is at risk. A workable routine looks like this:

  1. Mark the higher-timeframe structure — the swing highs and lows that define the current direction.
  2. Identify the levels where an indication would matter: prior highs and lows, session extremes, obvious liquidity pockets.
  3. Wait for the indication to print — an impulse that breaks a level or sweeps it and rejects.
  4. Define the correction zone: the area price should return to if the move is genuine.
  5. Only then look for the continuation entry, with the invalidation level already written down.

Doing this before the session means your decisions are made when you are calm. Doing it during the session means you are making them while a candle is moving against you, which is a different job entirely.

Confirmation and stop placement

The confirmation is what turns a marked level into an executed trade. In practice it is the behaviour of price inside the correction zone: a rejection wick, a smaller-timeframe break of structure, or a clean displacement candle in your direction. Without one of these, you are guessing at the exact moment of the turn.

The stop belongs to the setup, not to your comfort level. If the invalidation point implied by the structure is further away than your risk model allows, the correct action is to skip the trade or reduce size — not to move the stop closer and pretend the setup is the same. Position size is the variable you control; the market's invalidation level is not.

Common questions traders raise about entries

A few themes come up repeatedly from people working through this material. The first is confusion versus understanding: many traders can recite the ICC sequence perfectly and still hesitate at the moment of execution, because knowing the pattern and trusting it under pressure are separate skills that only screen time closes.

The second is the shift from a previous course to this one. Traders who finished the earlier material often describe this installment as correcting small errors rather than teaching something new — which is usually what moves someone from inconsistent to consistent.

The third is session timing. Not everyone can trade the New York session, and traders working night shifts report that lower-volume hours can actually sharpen decision-making, because there is less noise to react to and more time to process what price is doing.

The fourth, and the one that shows up most often, is risk and emotion. Traders who found success with these entries also report the hardest lesson coming from poor risk management rather than bad setups. A method that works still fails if one oversized position is allowed to undo ten correct ones.

The takeaway from this entry breakdown

Finding entries is a process of elimination, not prediction: you mark structure, wait for an indication, let the correction form, and only act on the continuation with a stop that the setup itself defines. The traders who get consistent results from this approach are rarely the ones with the most indicators — they are the ones who skip the setups that do not complete the sequence. If you want to see the markup applied to live XAUUSD charts, follow Trades By Sci on Instagram where the daily breakdowns are posted. This course is published by the SCI channel, and the third installment focuses specifically on the entry stage of the process.

Key takeaways

  • ICC stands for a three-stage sequence: Indication, Correction, Continuation — the setup is only valid when all three print in order.
  • Entry timing is a skill, not a signal: the same level can be a great trade or a trap depending on what price does when it gets there.
  • Marking up the chart before the session is what separates a planned entry from a reaction to a moving candle.
  • Stop placement belongs to the setup, not to your comfort level — if the stop is too wide, the trade is too big.
  • Risk management and emotion, not entry quality, are what most traders report as their hardest lesson after a good run.

Questions & answers

What does ICC stand for in trading entries?

ICC describes a three-stage price sequence: Indication, Correction, Continuation. The indication shows directional intent, the correction pulls price back into a zone, and the continuation is the expansion you enter on. A setup is only valid when all three stages appear in order.

Do I need an indicator to find entries this way?

No. The method reads market structure — swing highs and lows, level breaks and sweeps — rather than oscillators or moving averages. The chart markup and the behaviour of price at a level do the work that indicators usually replace.

How do I place a stop loss with this entry style?

The stop goes at the invalidation point implied by the structure, not at a distance that feels comfortable. If that level is too far for your risk per trade, reduce position size or skip the setup rather than tightening the stop artificially.

Why do traders who understand the method still struggle to execute?

Recognising a pattern and trusting it while a live candle moves against you are different skills. Most of the difficulty reported by traders comes from risk management and emotion rather than from the entry logic itself, which is why consistent size and a written plan matter more than another setup.

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

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