ICT trading concepts in 2026: the free 41-episode mentorship vs a structured smart money course

"ChatGPT suggested I focus on the 2022 ICT mentorship… watched through to number 5 which was kinda confusing."

That line was posted in an r/Forex thread about learning ICT with the weary title "Started learning ICT, but this is what ChatGPT says". The writer had done what a great many beginners now do. They asked a chatbot where to start, were pointed at the most famous free course in retail trading, and pressed play. They stopped at episode five of a series widely described as 41 episodes long.

Further down the same thread, another user put it more bluntly: "ICT is pretty confusing because they seem to make simple concepts more confusing than they are."

The short answer is this. ICT's vocabulary is worth learning, because liquidity, fair value gaps and market structure are now the common language of retail charting. The free mentorship is the original and costs nothing, but it is long and hard to follow in order. Many beginners find it easier to pass a short, graded course in the terms first, then go back to the source knowing what to listen for.

Quick answer: ICT trading concepts are worth learning, and the free 2022 ICT Mentorship on YouTube is the original source, but its very long sessions and loose structure lose many beginners early. YouTube summaries are shorter but vary in quality and never test you. Systemly's ICT & Smart Money strand (8 courses, 31 graded lessons) teaches the same terms in a structured set of courses and then shows them working inside real trade plans built from live price data. Choose the mentorship if you want the source and have the hours; choose a structured, graded course if you want to understand and use the words before you commit dozens of hours.

Systemly publishes this comparison, and our own ICT strand is one of the options in it. We have tried to treat ICT's work with the respect it has earned, and every competitor fact below is sourced and dated 24 September 2026.

Why ICT's words became everyone's words

ICT deserves credit before any criticism. The Inner Circle Trader gave a generation of retail traders a vocabulary for things they had half noticed on their charts. One is the idea that price often runs just beyond an obvious high or low before it turns. Another is that a fast, one-sided move leaves a gap behind it that price may come back to fill. A third is that the sequence of highs and lows tells you who is in control.

Liquidity, fair value gaps, order blocks and market structure are now standard terms, and many traders credit ICT with changing how they read a chart. Any honest comparison has to start from that point.

The trouble is not the ideas. The trouble is how hard they are to reach.

What is the ICT 2022 Mentorship?

The ICT 2022 Mentorship is a free series of YouTube videos in which ICT walks through his approach to reading price, and it is widely described as 41 episodes long. It is the primary source that many smart money courses and summary videos draw on.

Reviews of the teaching paint a consistent picture. A review of ICT published by Phidias cites "8+ hour sessions", "unclear action items" and "analysis paralysis". Followers have gone as far as making edited versions of the videos "without rants". That tells you how much people value the material, and how much work it takes to reach it.

Is ICT trading worth it for beginners?

The concepts are worth learning. Learning them from the source as your very first course is a harder call, and it usually goes wrong in one of three ways.

The mistake: treating hours watched as progress

The common mistake is to measure learning by episodes finished. The consequence is that after twenty hours of video you can name an order block but still cannot say where your stop goes, how big your trade should be, or what would prove you wrong. Back in that r/Forex thread, one user wrote: "Now I am losing interest in the whole idea od trading. Seems this just leads to a deeper rabbit hole" (spelling as in the original).

Think of it like learning to cook by watching a chef talk for eight hours without ever handing you the recipe card. You absorb the confidence and the jargon. You do not absorb the steps.

The mistake: collecting concepts instead of using one

The second mistake is to keep adding concepts. Each one brings a new reason to enter a trade and almost never a reason to stay out, so the trader either freezes or takes every trade because one concept always agrees. One prop firm trader described it perfectly on r/myfundedfutures: "I blew over 80+ prop firm accounts. Not because I didn't know enough—but because I knew too much and followed too little. Every time I took a trade, there were three different strategies arguing in my head."

It is the same as a sat-nav that offers five routes at every junction. Each route is sensible. Together they leave you parked on the hard shoulder.

The mistake: learning the language before the sentence

The third mistake is assuming you need the whole new vocabulary before you can trade at all. Another r/Forex user complained that ICT "repackages simple ideas into a new complex, made up language". You do not have to agree with that to see the consequence for a beginner. You spend weeks learning names and never learn the plain mechanics underneath them: a stop, a size and a reason.

Think of it like a driving lesson where the instructor spends the first hour renaming the pedals. The names may be clever. You still have not moved the car.

ICT terms in plain English

Here is the glossary we wish every beginner had before episode one. The third column is the part most courses skip.

• Market structure: Plain English: The pattern of swing highs and lows. Higher highs and higher lows describe an uptrend. Lower highs and lower lows describe a downtrend.; Where it does a job in a trade plan: It sets the direction, or tells you there is nothing worth trading.
• Break of structure: Plain English: Price moves past a previous swing high or low in the direction of the trend, which suggests the trend is continuing.; Where it does a job in a trade plan: Part of the reason for taking the trade.
• Market structure shift: Plain English: The first break against the trend, an early sign it may be turning.; Where it does a job in a trade plan: Often the thing that would make the trade fail.
• Liquidity: Plain English: Clusters of resting orders, especially stop-losses, sitting just beyond obvious highs and lows.; Where it does a job in a trade plan: Where your stop should not sit.
• Liquidity sweep: Plain English: Price pushes briefly through one of those clusters, triggers the stops, then reverses.; Where it does a job in a trade plan: The reason a stop gets moved further away.
• Fair value gap (FVG): Plain English: A three-candle pattern where the wicks of the first and third candles do not overlap, leaving a price range that traded in one direction only. Also called an imbalance.; Where it does a job in a trade plan: An entry zone or a target.
• Order block: Plain English: The last opposing candle before a strong move, treated as a zone where large orders may have been placed.; Where it does a job in a trade plan: An entry zone.
• Premium and discount: Plain English: The upper and lower halves of a recent price range. The idea is to buy in the lower half and sell in the upper half.; Where it does a job in a trade plan: A check on whether the entry price is reasonable.
• Displacement: Plain English: A fast, one-sided move with large candles, often leaving fair value gaps behind it.; Where it does a job in a trade plan: Evidence that a move has real force behind it.

Keep that table. One of its rows comes back in the worked example, where it moves a stop and changes the size of a trade.

Four ways to learn ICT in 2026

1. The free 2022 Mentorship

• Best for: patient learners who want the source and have the evenings to spare.
• Cost: free.
• The catch: sessions that reviewers describe as running past eight hours, action items that are hard to pin down, and no test at the end to tell you whether you understood any of it. You are the only person checking your work, and a beginner does not yet know what to check.

2. Paid smart money courses

Many sellers now package ICT concepts into paid courses, communities and "mentorships" of their own. Prices and quality vary so widely that we found no figure we could compare fairly, so we do not quote one here. The recurring complaint on Reddit is blunt. One r/Trading user wrote: "A lot of them are recycled free content plus a chatroom". Before you pay for any course, ask the questions in our breakdown of what forex courses cost per lesson: does it make you practise decisions, and does it mark you when you get them wrong?

3. YouTube summaries and "without rants" edits

Summaries are shorter, free and often well made, and a good one can make an idea click in minutes. The risk is that nobody checks them. A Legalaes study of 1,764 finance videos, reported on 3 September 2026, found that YouTube had the highest share of misleading videos of the four platforms studied, at 41.8%, and that 11.7% of the videos carried disclaimers. That study covered finance content in general, not ICT in particular, but it is the pool you are fishing in. We cover the free route in more depth in can you learn forex from YouTube and TikTok.

A note on chart apps that "find" order blocks

Some apps mark ICT features for you from a picture of your chart. Chart AI on the App Store, for example, returns structure, order blocks and fair value gaps for $3.99 a week or $14.99 a month. Our concern is the method, not the company. A screenshot cannot hold the bars off-screen, exact prices (they are estimated from pixels) or your account balance, which sizing needs. Liquidity often sits just off the edge of the image.

4. Systemly's ICT & Smart Money strand

Systemly (systemly.ai) is a UK-built forex and gold trade-planning app that turns live price data into a complete trade plan, with entry, stop, targets, position size and plain-English reasoning, and teaches the terms in a built-in academy of 32 courses.

One of the Academy's six subject areas is ICT & Smart Money, which runs to 8 courses and 31 lessons. It is not a video library. You answer questions, it marks you, and a few wrong answers end the attempt, so a lesson is something you pass rather than scroll past. Charts inside the lessons are drawn live, and XP and streaks work much as they do on Duolingo.

The part that matters most for ICT learners is what happens next door. Systemly's checking code reads the chart's structure directly from live price data (the open, high, low, close and volume of each bar), rather than from a picture of a chart, and it moves any stop that sits on obvious resting liquidity. When a plan uses one of those ideas, the lesson that explains it lives in the same app.

The honest catch: the whole Academy is just under 12 hours of material. It teaches the core ICT terms and how they fit into a plan. It does not reproduce ICT's full body of work, and it is not ICT's own voice. If you want the source, you still have to go to the source.

ICT learning options compared

• Cost: Free 2022 Mentorship: Free; Paid smart money courses: Varies widely, no verified figure; YouTube summaries: Free; Systemly ICT strand: Free plan includes part of the Academy; paid plans from £9.99 a month (checked 4 October 2026)
• Format: Free 2022 Mentorship: Long videos; Paid smart money courses: Usually video plus a chatroom; YouTube summaries: Short videos; Systemly ICT strand: Graded lessons with live-drawn charts
• Length: Free 2022 Mentorship: 41 episodes, "8+ hour sessions" cited; Paid smart money courses: Varies; YouTube summaries: Minutes to a few hours; Systemly ICT strand: 8 courses, 31 lessons
• Structured curriculum: Free 2022 Mentorship: Loose; Paid smart money courses: Varies; YouTube summaries: None; Systemly ICT strand: Yes, 8 courses
• Tests you: Free 2022 Mentorship: No; Paid smart money courses: Sometimes; YouTube summaries: No; Systemly ICT strand: Yes, and a few wrong answers end the attempt
• Straight from the source: Free 2022 Mentorship: Yes; Paid smart money courses: No; YouTube summaries: No; Systemly ICT strand: No
• Depth of ICT's full method: Free 2022 Mentorship: Deepest available; Paid smart money courses: Varies; YouTube summaries: Shallow; Systemly ICT strand: Core terms, not the full body of work
• Terms shown inside a live trade plan: Free 2022 Mentorship: No; Paid smart money courses: Varies; YouTube summaries: No; Systemly ICT strand: Yes, in the same app

Two rows go against Systemly and one is a draw at best. If depth and the original voice matter most to you, the mentorship wins those rows outright.

Where a term meets a trade: moving a stop off liquidity

This is the payoff from the glossary. Here is the difference between an ICT idea as it is often shared and the same idea written as a full plan.

A typical smart money idea in a chat group names a pair, an order block, an entry inside a fair value gap, a stop below the low and a target at the liquidity above. What it rarely gives you is a size, a reason the stop is where it is, or a record of what happened next.

A complete plan fills in every field. The version below is a generic illustration of the fields, not a real or claimed trade.

• Direction: buy, or a plain statement that there is nothing worth trading right now.
• Entry: inside the fair value gap left by the last displacement.
• Stop: beyond the swing low. If that puts it on an obvious cluster of resting stops, it moves further away.
• Targets: laddered, so money comes off in steps rather than all at one level.
• Size: in lots, worked out from your balance and the risk percentage you enter.
• Reasoning: in plain English, including what would make the idea fail, such as a close below the swing low that signals a market structure shift.
• Afterwards: a record of which level price reached, when, and how far it went against the trade first.

Now the arithmetic. Take a £500 account. At an assumed rate of $1.34 to the pound, that is about $670, and 1% risk is $6.70. On EUR/USD a pip is worth $10 on a standard lot, so $0.10 on a 0.01 lot. Pip values differ by broker and account currency, so check your own contract specification.

1. The first draft puts the stop 15 pips below entry, right under an obvious swing low. Risk per 0.01 lot is 15 × $0.10 = $1.50. $6.70 ÷ $1.50 = 4.47, which rounds down to 0.04 lots. Real risk is 15 × $0.40 = $6.00, about 0.9% of the account.
2. That stop sits exactly where everyone else's stops sit, so it is moved to 32 pips, beyond the cluster.
3. The trap is to keep 0.04 lots. Risk becomes 32 × $0.40 = $12.80, about 1.9% of the account. The trade has quietly nearly doubled in danger.
4. The fix is to re-derive the size. $6.70 ÷ (32 × $0.10) = 2.09, which rounds down to 0.02 lots. Real risk is 32 × $0.20 = $6.40, about 0.96%.

Systemly's checking code runs the same sequence after the AI drafts a plan: a minimum stop width is enforced, a stop sitting on obvious resting liquidity is moved, every distance is recomputed and the position size is worked out again from scratch. The short version is "The AI reads the chart. The code owns the trade." If you are placing trades by hand, the free Risk Doctor tool checks a trade's risk and position size before you place it. To see what finished plans look like, browse the public feed of community scans.

Where the free ICT mentorship is the better choice

• You want the ideas in the words of the person who coined them, not in anyone's summary, ours included.
• You already understand stops, lots and risk per trade, and you want depth on price behaviour.
• You have the time and patience for long sessions, and you take notes well.
• Your budget is zero and you would rather spend hours than money.

YouTube summaries are the better choice if you only want a quick sense of the words before deciding whether ICT suits you at all.

How we compared

We compared four ways of learning ICT trading concepts: the free 2022 Mentorship, paid smart money courses as a category, YouTube summaries, and Systemly's ICT & Smart Money strand. We looked at cost, format, length, whether there is a fixed order, whether you are tested, depth, and whether the terms are shown inside a real trade plan. Competitor details come from public reviews, app store listings and Reddit threads, all linked below and checked on 24 September 2026. Prices and course content change, so check each provider's own page before you pay for anything.

FAQ

What are ICT trading concepts?

ICT trading concepts are a set of ideas about price, popularised by the Inner Circle Trader on YouTube. The core terms are market structure (the pattern of highs and lows), liquidity (clusters of stop orders beyond obvious levels), fair value gaps (price ranges that traded in one direction only) and order blocks (the last opposing candle before a strong move). The vocabulary is now standard across retail trading.

Is ICT trading worth it for beginners?

The concepts are worth learning, because the vocabulary is now everywhere. The free 2022 Mentorship is long, with reviews citing "8+ hour sessions" and "unclear action items", so many beginners stall early. A common approach is to learn the core terms in a short, graded course first, practise with a demo account, and then return to the original material for depth.

How long is the ICT 2022 Mentorship?

The ICT 2022 Mentorship is widely described as 41 episodes on YouTube, and reviewers cite sessions running past eight hours. It is free. Because of the length, some followers have made edited versions "without rants". If you plan to watch it all, set aside dozens of hours and take notes on each term as it is introduced.

What is a fair value gap in simple terms?

A fair value gap is a three-candle pattern in which the wicks of the first and third candles do not overlap. The space between them is a price range that traded in one direction only, sometimes called an imbalance. Smart money traders watch these gaps as possible entry zones or targets, on the idea that price often returns to them.

Is ICT trading legit?

ICT is a free teaching approach, not a product with an audited track record, so "legit" depends on how it is used. The vocabulary is widely used and many traders credit it. No method guarantees results, and most retail CFD accounts lose money. Judge any ICT-based course by whether it teaches stops, sizing and risk, not just terminology.

What is the best smart money concepts course?

There is no single best smart money concepts course for everyone. Look for a fixed order, graded questions, plain-English definitions and a clear link from each term to a real trade decision. The free ICT Mentorship offers the most depth. Systemly's ICT & Smart Money strand offers 8 graded courses and 31 lessons inside the same app as its trade plans.

Learn the words where you use them

If you want the ICT terms laid out course by course, with questions that mark you and trade plans that show each word doing a job, start with the Systemly Academy's ICT & Smart Money courses. Then, if you still want the source, the mentorship will make far more sense. You can also read how an AI chatbot compares as a teacher in can ChatGPT teach you to trade.

Sources

• Reddit r/Forex, "Started learning ICT, but this is what ChatGPT says"
• Phidias, "Is ICT legit?"
• Reddit r/myfundedfutures, "three different strategies arguing in my head"
• Reddit r/Trading, "recycled free content plus a chatroom"
• PPC Land on the Legalaes study of 1,764 finance videos (3 September 2026)
• Chart AI on the App Store
• Systemly
• Systemly Academy
• Systemly Risk Doctor
• Systemly community scans

Trading forex and CFDs carries a high risk of losing money, and most retail accounts do. Systemly is an educational and trade-planning tool. It does not provide financial advice or personal recommendations, and it is not authorised by the FCA to do so. Past outcomes do not predict future results.