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Strategy Playbooks
Smart Money · Advanced

ICT Silver Bullet

One hour, one fair value gap, one draw on liquidity.

Backtest this playbook
Origin: Michael J. Huddleston (Inner Circle Trader)
Session
10:00–11:00 ET (also 03:00–04:00 and 14:00–15:00)
Timeframes
1m–5m execution, 15m–1h bias
Markets
NQ / MNQ, ES / MES
Reward
Liquidity target, minimum 1.5R
Illustration
104.0106.0108.0110.009:0009:3010:0010:3011:00Silver Bullet 10:00–11:00Buy-side liquidity 108.4SSL 104.2Stop 104.0FVGSweepLong 105.5Target
Five-minute sketch. At 10:05 price sweeps the 104.2 sell-side low, then displaces higher and leaves a gap between 104.8 and 105.5. The retrace fills a long at 105.5 with the stop below candle 1 at 104.0. The 108.4 buy-side high pays about 1.9R.

Why it works

The Silver Bullet narrows the Smart Money playbook to a single hour. Inside the window you wait for price to displace through a level, leave a fair value gap and retrace into it. The trade targets the nearest pool of resting liquidity — an obvious prior high or low — rather than an arbitrary multiple.

The rules

01Setup

  • Before 10:00 ET, mark the obvious liquidity: session swing highs and lows, equal highs and lows, and the overnight high and low.
  • Inside 10:00–11:00 ET, wait for a displacement candle that leaves a fair value gap — candle 3’s low above candle 1’s high for longs.
  • Favour gaps that form after a sweep of the opposite liquidity: the false move that traps breakout traders.

02Entry

  • Rest a limit order at the gap’s proximal edge, or at its 50% level for a deeper fill.
  • Cancel any unfilled order when the window closes.
  • One trade per window.

03Stop

  • Beyond candle 1 of the gap — the structural stop.
  • Alternative: beyond the far edge of the gap. It is tighter but stops out more often.

04Target

  • The nearest opposing liquidity pool: the prior swing high for longs, the prior swing low for shorts.
  • Skip the trade if that pool offers less than 1.5R.

05Management

  • Decide on partial profits before the trade, never during it.
  • Flat by 16:00 ET. This is an intraday model.

06Invalidation

  • A candle body closes through the far side of the gap before your fill.
  • The window closes without a fill.
  • A tier-1 release (CPI, NFP, FOMC) inside the window — stand aside.

Common mistakes

  • Taking every gap in the hour instead of the first clean one
  • Trading against the higher-timeframe draw on liquidity
  • Moving the target beyond the liquidity pool because the trade “feels strong”
  • Forcing a trade on a quiet, range-bound morning

Educational material, not financial advice. The illustration is a sketch of the rules, not a historical trade. Results in the backtester are hypothetical and do not guarantee future performance.