Market Maker Models

What are Market Maker Models?

Market maker models are the ICT schematic for a complete delivery cycle. In the buy model (MMBM), price leaves an original consolidation, works lower in stages (often stepping down through smaller consolidations) until it reaches a sell-side objective, then reverses and retraces the entire path, with the same consolidations it fell through becoming targets on the way back up. The sell model (MMSM) is the mirror image around a high. The two halves are described as the sell side and buy side of a curve, joined by a smart money reversal at its extreme.

It is a map, not a signal. The model's appeal is that it strings together ideas usually taught separately — consolidation, the run toward a draw on liquidity, reversal, re-delivery — into one arc with pre-defined objectives. Take the name loosely: there is no way to verify that actual market-making desks trade this way, published definitions vary between educators, and real charts rarely deliver the textbook symmetry. Many practitioners use it as higher-timeframe framing rather than a pattern to execute mechanically.

How traders use it

• As a target ladder: once a reversal is suspected at the extreme of the curve, the consolidations and short-term highs or lows formed on the way in become sequenced objectives on the way out, taken level by level rather than as one distant target.
• As context for entries, not the entry itself: the reversal end of the curve is traded with lower-timeframe confirmation such as a change in the state of delivery or a structure shift; the model says where to pay attention, the confirmation says when.
• As a bias frame: deciding which half of the curve price is on (still being delivered away from the original consolidation, or already returning) keeps a trader from fading a move the model expects to extend.