ICT Weekly Profiles: The 4 Templates That Predict The Week | ICT Concepts

0:00If you've ever felt like every week trades completely differently and there's no rhyme or reason, the truth is the opposite. Almost every trading week falls into one of four weekly profiles, and once you can identify which template the week is running, your bias and trade selection get dramatically easier. Today: the four templates, how to identify each one by Tuesday or Wednesday, and the bias each gives you for the rest of the week.

0:24Here are the four. Consolidation: the week chops inside a narrow range — Monday's high and low contain most of the week. Expansion: the week trends decisively in one direction — Monday's open is one extreme, Friday's close is the other. Reversal: the first half goes one way, then mid-week price reverses and finishes the opposite direction — the most lucrative if you catch the pivot. Seek-and-destroy: whipsaw chop that sweeps both Monday's high and low through the week — the most punishing if you don't recognize it. Four templates, four very different playbooks.

0:58Start with the easiest to trade: expansion. The week opens at one extreme and closes at the other. Monday establishes the direction, Tuesday confirms it with continuation, and the rest of the week is one long trend move. The trade is simple — fade pullbacks back into the trend, every single time. If you've correctly identified an expansion week by Tuesday's close, the rest of the week is essentially a single trade you keep adding to on dips. The mistake is treating it like a range and trying to short the highs.

1:30Here's the trick to identifying the template before the week is over. By Tuesday's close you can usually tell. If Monday and Tuesday stayed inside a tight range and didn't break key levels — likely consolidation. If they trended cleanly in one direction with no real pullback — likely expansion. If Monday went one way and Tuesday reversed sharply — possible reversal week setting up. If both days had wild whipsaws sweeping levels in both directions — seek-and-destroy and you should size down or stay flat. Tuesday's close is your decision point.

2:05Now the trap. The templates only help when one of them clearly fits. Force one onto a week that doesn't match and you'll trade exactly the wrong way — long during a seek-and-destroy, short during an expansion. If by Wednesday morning the week's behavior doesn't clearly map to one of the four, the honest answer is the template is unclear and your edge is gone for the week. Stand aside, or trade smaller. The market doesn't owe you clarity every week, and pretending it does is expensive.

2:36On any liquid futures chart, scroll back week by week and label what each one was. You'll see the patterns immediately — clean expansion weeks have an open-to-close trend; reversal weeks have a sharp pivot in the middle; consolidation weeks barely move. Tag the weeks for a month, and you'll start spotting the template forming as it happens, not after. That's the edge: the profile gives you a directional bias you can hold through chop instead of flipping after every wiggle.

3:01So: four weekly templates, and almost every week fits one. Identify by Tuesday's close, bias your trade selection accordingly — fade in consolidation, trend-follow in expansion, take the pivot in reversal, sit out the seek-and-destroy. Don't force a template that doesn't fit; if the week is unclear by Wednesday, your edge is gone for the week. Subscribe for the full method, and trade your own plan. Education, not financial advice.