Your Model: One Setup, Written Down

The failure mode of someone who has just finished Tier 3

You now know twelve arrays, four phases, two clocks, a cascade, a confirmation tool and an entry band. The failure mode that produces is not ignorance — it is breadth. Twelve arrays × four sessions × five timeframes is a menu, and a menu is exactly what you had six years ago, just better labelled.

This module does the opposite of everything before it. It removes.

One setup. One window. One direction per period. Everything else you have learned becomes context that qualifies or vetoes that one setup — not additional setups.

Why it has to be written

Without a trading plan, there is no way to evaluate your decisions, no way to trade consistently, no way to know what is successful and what aspects of your trading need improving.

A trading plan should be clear, comprehensive, and written.. and above all strictly followed at all times. Even through losing streaks.

The operative phrase is “no way to evaluate your decisions.” Without one written setup, a losing month has a hundred possible explanations and you will pick the one that hurts least. With one written setup, a losing month has exactly two: the plan was not followed, or the plan is wrong. Both are fixable. Neither is available to you right now.

Concept checkd-m14-01

"Without a trading plan, there is no way to evaluate your decisions." What does one written setup do that twelve available setups cannot?

• It reduces a losing month to two possible explanations — the plan was not followed, or the plan is wrong — and both are fixable.
• It increases your win rate.
• It means you never miss a setup.
• It removes the need for judgement.

Check answer

Your primary model: the swing setup, written out

This is Month 12’s second template — the one M10 identified as matching the way you traded profitably in 2023 — expanded into every decision, with the module that taught each one named beside it.

The template this is built from

Buy Setup & Condition: Internal Range Liquidity Long Monthly IOF = Bullish Weekly IOF = Bullish Daily IOF = Bullish 4Hour Retracement Lower In Price To D,W,M Discount Array Pattern & Execution: When the 4Hour chart trades down to a HTF Discount Array look for the Daily to Close FVG into +OB Profit Objective: Daily Or Weekly Premium Array in the form of a Buy Stop Liquidity Pool or Bearish Orderblock

(IOF is institutional order flow — M10’s three-part test. D, W, M are daily, weekly, monthly; +OB is a bullish order block.) Watch the menu collapse into that one template, then see how the finished plan is used:

▶ Animation Your model: thirteen decisions, one written plan ↻ Replay

Twelve arrays, four sessions, five timeframes: a menu. That is what failed before.

This module removes. One setup, written down as thirteen decisions.

Frame first: one pair, three charts, a bias that is allowed to say NEUTRAL.

Then the level and the clock: a validated array, Monday to Wednesday.

Then execution: limit price, structural stop, computed size, 3:1 or nothing.

Thirteen decisions. Every one is already yours — M0 to M13, in order.

Check a setup against all thirteen, in order. All pass: place it exactly as written.

One fails: no trade. You may not reinterpret the rule in the moment.

You may veto a setup that qualifies — you may never authorise one that doesn't.

The same thirteen decisions in full:

#	Decision	The rule	Taught in
1	Instrument	One pair. EURUSD or GBPUSD. A second only after forty logged trades.	M0
2	Charts	Frame: daily. Level: 4H. Execute: 1H.	M10
3	Bias	Monthly, weekly and daily must all pass the order-flow test — down-close candles supporting price and expansion on up closes. Any failure ⇒ NEUTRAL ⇒ no trade.	M10
4	Range	The obvious daily range containing current price, anchored to three-candle swing points. Equilibrium is its 50%.	M3, M4
5	Half	Longs only from below equilibrium; shorts only from above. Price at equilibrium ⇒ no trade.	M4, M8
6	Entry array	The nearest validated discount array the 4H retraces into — order block first, fair value gap second. Validation is not optional.	M5, M6, M8
7	Window	Entries Monday to Wednesday. If the level is not reached by Wednesday’s close, the idea expires.	M9
8	Confirmation (optional)	SMT on the correlated pair or the dollar index (DXY) at that level. Its absence does not veto; its presence does not override anything else.	M11
9	Entry price	Limit at the 70.5% of the swing that produced the move, provided it is within ~15 pips of the array. Never a market order.	M12
10	Stop	Beyond the array’s structural extreme, plus spread. Never widened. Ever.	M5, M13
11	Size	Computed: risk % of account ÷ stop distance. 0.25–0.5% while learning.	M13
12	Filter	Entry-to-target ÷ entry-to-stop must be ≥ 3:1, measured before placing.	M13
13	Target & management	Partial at the first opposing array; remainder to the named premium array. Stop to breakeven at the partial.	M13, M15

Thirteen decisions. Every one of them already yours. That table is not a system someone handed you — it is your own understanding, in order, with the ambiguity removed. Which is the whole thesis of the course, arriving on time.

Concept checkd-m14-02

In the thirteen-decision swing model, what happens if the daily order-flow test fails but the monthly and weekly both pass?

• No trade. Step 3 requires all three, and a single NEUTRAL ends the process for that period.
• Take it with reduced size, since two of three agree.
• Wait for the daily to confirm and then enter late.
• Use the weekly array instead of the daily one.

Check answer

Concept checkd-m14-03

You have a valid long thesis and a valid short thesis on the same pair for the same week. What does the model say?

• You have no bias, not two setups — and step 3 already says what to do about that.
• Trade whichever triggers first.
• Trade both, hedged.
• Take the one with the better reward-to-risk.

Check answer

The intraday alternative: LJR-1, as a worked example of the form

STRATEGY_DELIVERABLE.md specifies a complete intraday model — the London Judas Reversal. It is the same thirteen decisions with the clock swapped: the Asian range replaces the weekly range, the killzone replaces Monday-to-Wednesday, and the hold is hours instead of days.

It is here for two reasons. It is the model to use if your availability ever changes; and more usefully, it is a worked example of what “written down” actually means. Compare its bias rule with the one you would write by instinct:

“Is the higher timeframe bullish?” → 18EMA > 40EMA on D1 with separation ≥ 0.30 ATR. If you cannot state the bias in those terms at 06:00 GMT, the answer is NO-TRADE. Never “it looks bullish.” — STRATEGY_DELIVERABLE.md §3.9

That is the standard your own thirteen answers have to reach. Not “the daily looks bullish” — a condition that is either true or false when you read it, and that produces the same answer whoever reads it.

Concept checkd-m14-04select all that apply

§3.9 of STRATEGY_DELIVERABLE.md is titled "WHERE THIS SYSTEM IS NOT ICT — READ THIS SECTION TWICE". Which of these does it actually say? (Select all.)

• The mechanical model automates roughly the last fifth of ICT's process and replaces the rest with a daily EMA state plus a premium/discount location.
• At major turns, the EMA proxy and COT positioning disagree — and that is when the proxy is most wrong.
• Interest-rate triad, seasonal tendencies and retail sentiment are removed with no substitute.
• The mechanical version has been backtested and the losses from these omissions are quantified.
• "Displacement" is a term from the mentorship that the document adopts.

Check answer

The one place discretion is allowed, and why it is safe

STRATEGY_DELIVERABLE.md permits exactly one discretionary act, and the shape of the permission is worth stealing for your own plan:

A veto can only ever reduce trading — it can never add a trade, increase size, or move a stop. — §3.9

That asymmetry is what keeps discretion from quietly becoming improvisation. You are allowed to decline a setup that qualifies. You are never allowed to authorise one that does not.

Write your vetoes into the plan while calm, because you will be reaching for them when you are not: no HTF bias, price at equilibrium, outside the window, under 3:1, a limit already hit, and whatever personal conditions you know degrade your judgement.

Concept checkd-m14-05

The plan permits exactly one discretionary act. What makes it safe rather than a loophole?

• The asymmetry: a veto can only ever reduce trading — never add a trade, increase size, or move a stop.
• That you log it, so it can be reviewed later.
• That it is used rarely.
• That it only applies to COT data.

Check answer

Now write yours

The plan builder asks the thirteen questions. Each one opens the Decision Rule card from the module that answered it, so you are editing rather than inventing.

Four standards for an answer, and they are the same four the builder repeats:

1. Someone else could execute it. If it needs you present to interpret, it is not a rule yet.
2. It names prices and times, not qualities. “A strong order block” is a feeling; “a down-close candle whose high was later traded through, inside daily discount” is a rule.
3. It says what happens when the condition fails. Every Decision Rule card on this site has an otherwise line for exactly this reason.
4. It is short enough that you have actually read it this week.

Then test it before you trust it

A plan is a hypothesis about your own behaviour. The deliverable of this module is not the document — it is the document after it has met twenty weeks of chart and been rewritten once.

Replay assignmentr-m14-modelYour one pairAs your plan specifies — do not deviate

Run your written model, unchanged, over twenty historical weeks

Set the replay up

1. Print or open your plan from /plan. It must be finished before you start this.
2. Pick a start date twenty weeks back. Bar Replay from there.
3. Open the journal in a second tab. Every week gets an entry, including the empty ones.

Then, bar by bar

1. Work forward one week at a time, applying only what your plan says.
2. Where the plan is ambiguous, stop and write down the ambiguity — that is the deliverable, not the trade.
3. Log every week as: took a trade / skipped by rule / missed one I should have taken.
4. At the end, count the ambiguities. Rewrite the plan to remove each one.

Self-assessment — tick only what is honestly true

• I did not improvise a single entry that the plan did not authorise.
• Every skip is traceable to a specific written rule.
• I found and wrote down at least three ambiguities in my own plan.
• I rewrote the plan afterwards and the new version resolves them.
• The number of trades over twenty weeks is small enough that I can name each one.

What actually happened, in two sentences — including if you got it wrong

Log this attempt0/5 ticked·Bar: Twenty weeks logged and the plan rewritten once. A plan that survives twenty weeks unchanged has not been tested hard enough.

Concept checkd-m14-06

What is the actual deliverable of this module?

• The plan after it has been run unchanged over twenty historical weeks and rewritten once, with every ambiguity you hit written down.
• The written plan itself.
• A backtest of the model.
• Passing the capstone.

Check answer

The decision rule

Decision rule DR-14

When

You are about to act on a chart, at any time, for any reason.

Then

Open your written plan and check the setup against all thirteen answers in order. If every one is satisfied, take it exactly as written — the entry price, the stop, the size and the target are all already decided, and the only remaining action is to place the order.

Otherwise

If any single answer is not satisfied, there is no trade — and you may not repair it by reinterpreting the rule in the moment. You are permitted to veto a qualifying setup for any reason; you are never permitted to authorise one that does not qualify. Anything you improvise is logged as a rule violation whether it wins or loses.