Smart Money Concepts Glossary: The Complete ICT Terms Reference

A Smart Money Concepts glossary only earns its name if nothing is missing. SMC and ICT content leans on a dense, self-referential vocabulary — order block, fair value gap, liquidity sweep, killzone, IPDA — and each term quietly assumes you already know three others. This is the complete reference: every core term across 10 categories, defined in plain English, so the next SMC/ICT chart breakdown you read actually parses on the first pass.

The terms are grouped in the order you need them:

1. Market structure — how price direction is labeled
2. Liquidity — where stops cluster and get hunted
3. Order flow / PD arrays — the order-block family of zones
4. Imbalance / gaps — the inefficiencies price tends to revisit
5. Price delivery theory — the framework's model of how price moves
6. ICT setups & models — named, repeatable patterns built from the terms above
7. Fibonacci & PD zones — premium, discount, and entry timing
8. Session & time theory — killzones, true opens, and quarterly cycles
9. Multi-timeframe process — how the pieces stack across timeframes
10. Candle & price action — the smallest building block, the individual candle

What Are Smart Money Concepts and ICT?

Smart Money Concepts (SMC) is a retail trading framework that reads price action as if it reveals the footprints of large institutional ("smart money") order flow — where big players supposedly built positions, where they parked stop-loss orders, and where they will return to fill more.

ICT (Inner Circle Trader) is Michael Huddleston's original body of teaching that most SMC terminology is drawn from. ICT predates the "SMC" label — most of what traders now call SMC is a simplified, repackaged subset of ICT, which is why the two vocabularies overlap so heavily and are often used interchangeably.

Treat this as a translation layer, not a trading strategy or a backtested edge. Knowing what a Judas Swing is doesn't tell you whether trading around one is profitable — see our options flow and smart money article for how institutional-style flow reading is approached with actual data, and our market structure guide for a framework-neutral look at structure labeling.

1. Market Structure Terms

Market structure terms describe how a chart's swing highs and lows are labeled to determine trend direction — the vocabulary every other SMC/ICT term sits on top of.

Our market structure hierarchy article goes deeper on how HH/HL/LH/LL sequences are actually identified on a real chart, including the ambiguity around where a "swing point" is drawn.

2. Liquidity Terms

Liquidity terms describe where stop-loss orders are assumed to cluster, and how price is said to move toward them before reversing.

Our liquidity sweep and stop hunt article walks through what a sweep looks like candle-by-candle and how it differs from a normal breakout.

3. Order Flow / PD Array Terms

These terms mark specific price zones where SMC/ICT content claims institutional orders were placed — the "where do I enter" layer of the framework, collectively called PD Arrays (Premium/Discount Arrays).

4. Imbalance / Gap Terms

5. Price Delivery Theory

This group covers ICT's model of how price moves through time, not just where.

• Power of Three (AMD) — the idea that each session (and each day, week, or month) moves through three phases: Accumulation (a tight range builds), Manipulation (a false move sweeps liquidity, often called the Judas Swing), and Distribution (the real directional move plays out)
• IPDA (Interbank Price Delivery Algorithm) — ICT's term for the idea that price is delivered by an algorithmic process referencing specific historical lookback windows, commonly cited as 20, 40, and 60 trading days
• "The algorithm" / "the algo" — informal ICT shorthand for the same idea: that price movement follows a repeatable, non-random delivery process rather than pure supply and demand
• Expansion — the phase where price moves quickly and directionally, usually right after a liquidity sweep
• Consolidation / Retracement — the phase where price pauses or partially reverses inside a range, usually building the next accumulation
• Reversal — a full change of the prevailing directional bias, distinct from a retracement
• Range Expansion — the specific event of price breaking out of a tight accumulation range with strong momentum

6. ICT Setups & Models

Named, repeatable patterns built by combining the terms above into a single entry model.

7. Fibonacci & PD Zones

8. Session & Time Theory

ICT content places heavy weight on when a setup occurs, not just its shape.

• ICT Macros — specific, narrower minute-based windows within an hour (commonly cited examples fall near the top of the hour, such as :50–:10) where ICT teaching expects an elevated chance of a directional move
• True Day Open / Midnight Open — 00:00 NY time, used as the anchor point for measuring the day's range and directional bias
• Weekly True Open — the open of the current week (commonly Sunday 6:00pm NY time in ICT teaching), used the same way as the daily true open but for weekly bias
• Monthly True Open — the same concept applied to the first trading session of the calendar month
• Quarterly Theory — the idea that Power of Three nests fractally: any range (a day, a week, a month, even a year) can be divided into four quarters, each playing a version of the accumulation/manipulation/distribution/continuation cycle
• High-impact news windows — scheduled economic releases (CPI, NFP, FOMC) that ICT/SMC content generally treats as separate from killzone timing — often flagged as periods to avoid rather than trade

9. Multi-Timeframe Process Terms

This is where the market structure hierarchy article becomes directly useful again — nested structure only makes sense once you can reliably label HH/HL/LH/LL on one timeframe at a time.

10. Candle & Price Action Terms

Complete Glossary — All Terms by Category