Model 2022

What is Model 2022?

Model 2022 is the intraday entry model taught in the free 2022 ICT YouTube mentorship. The community adopted the year as the model's name. It is a fixed three-beat sequence: raid, shift, entry. First, price runs a visible pool of resting stops (a liquidity sweep of an old low when hunting longs, an old high for shorts), ideally into a higher-timeframe objective. Second, price turns with displacement: an energetic leg that closes through a recent opposing swing point, the market structure shift (MSS). Third, the entry is the retracement into the fair value gap the displacement leg leaves behind, stop beyond the raided extreme, target at the liquidity on the far side.

In practice it's run top-down: bias and the pool to be raided are read on something like the 15-minute to hourly chart, and the sweep-shift-retrace is executed on 1-5 minute charts, usually inside the London or New York morning killzones. "Model 2022" is community shorthand rather than a formal spec (traders differ on timeframes and on how strict the structure shift must be), but the raid → MSS → gap-entry skeleton is the stable, recognizable core.

The source is the free mentorship series Michael J. Huddleston, the Inner Circle Trader, published on YouTube across 2022, where the sequence was presented as a single repeatable setup worth mastering on its own; indicator names like "One Setup For Life" echo that framing. The model is the executable form of ICT's wider session narrative: the raid corresponds to the manipulation phase of the accumulation-manipulation-distribution template, and the displacement leg that follows is the distribution the entry tries to join. Resting orders above old highs and below old lows are the fuel: each raided liquidity pool supplies the counterparties the reversal leg needs, which is why the model insists the sweep come first.

Two honest caveats attach. First, the model is discretionary at every joint: which pool counts as the draw, how much energy qualifies as displacement, and which gap is the entry all vary by operator, so two traders can run Model 2022 on the same chart and take different trades. Second, the smart-money framing is an interpretation rather than a documented mechanism; what is checkable on the chart is the sequence itself, and no published, independently verified track record establishes its edge. Treat it as a structured playbook to test, with session liquidity and time-of-day context doing much of the filtering work.

How to identify a Model 2022 setup on a chart

The setup is a fixed sequence, so identification is a checklist run top-down from a bias timeframe to an execution timeframe.

1. 1On the 15-minute to hourly chart, mark the resting pools: prior-day high and low, the session extremes tracked by ICT session ranges, and obvious equal highs or lows.
2. 2Establish the draw: decide which pool price is being pulled toward and in which direction the higher-timeframe profile points.
3. 3Wait for the raid: price must trade through one of the marked levels, ideally during an active window, taking out the stops resting beyond it.
4. 4Demand displacement: an energetic reversal leg that closes through the most recent opposing swing point on the execution timeframe, printing the market structure shift and leaving an imbalance behind.
5. 5Mark the gap the displacement leg left; the entry is the retracement into it, either resting a limit in the gap or acting on its first touch, consistent with FVG behavior rules.
6. 6Set invalidation beyond the raided extreme and the objective at the opposing pool; if any beat of the sequence is missing, the setup does not qualify.

How traders use it

• As a complete intraday playbook: the sequence supplies the trigger (the retrace into the gap), the invalidation (beyond the swept high or low), and the objective (the opposite pool), so a trade is either fully formed or not taken at all.
• As a filter on structure breaks: a shift only counts here after a sweep and with displacement; structure breaks without a preceding raid are treated as continuation noise rather than reversal signals, which is the model's main defense against false shifts.
• As a session routine: mark the pools left by Asia, London, and the prior day, wait for one to be taken during an active window, then stalk the shift-and-retrace on the execution timeframe instead of chasing the sweep itself.
• With time gating: many practitioners only take the sequence inside specific windows anchored to New York time, leaning on ICT time anchors such as the 8:30 news embargo lift and the 9:30 equities open, and stand down outside them.
• With projected targets: when the opposing pool is distant, standard-deviation projections of the manipulation leg supply interim objectives for scaling out along the way.

Model 2022 vs neighboring ICT concepts