Smart Money Concepts
Institutional trading strategies based on order blocks, fair value gaps, and liquidity concepts.
4 Strategy Templates
Smart Money Concepts (SMC) is a price-action framework that interprets intraday chart patterns as institutional footprint. Evidence of where large orders were absorbed, where stops got swept, and where price is likely to retest before continuing. The framework shares DNA with classical Wyckoff methodology but operates on shorter timeframes and uses a distinct vocabulary: Fair Value Gaps mark institutional displacement, Order Blocks mark the last opposing candle before a large move, Liquidity Sweeps mark manufactured stop runs.
The strategies in this category are all short-timeframe (5-minute to 1-hour) and entry-focused. They assume the user already has higher-timeframe directional bias and are looking for a mechanical intraday trigger aligned with that bias. FVG retest entries target the 50% level of a recent displacement gap; Order Block entries wait for price to return to a prior institutional decision zone; Liquidity Grab reversals fade the manufactured sweep of an obvious swing point. The critical filter across all SMC strategies is higher-timeframe alignment: SMC signals fire constantly in both directions, and taking them without directional context produces whipsaw losses. Pair these strategies with a Daily or 4H bias filter. trade only longs when HTF structure is bullish, only shorts when bearish.
Enter at institutional order blocks where smart money has placed significant orders, creating high-probability reversal zones.
Trade the rebalancing of Fair Value Gaps. Imbalanced price areas that price tends to revisit.
Fair Value Gaps (imbalances between buyers and sellers) tend to get filled as price returns to them. Enter at the 50% level of a bullish FVG during a return, targeting the next liquidity pool above.
Price often sweeps prior swing highs/lows to collect retail stop orders before reversing. This is 'liquidity grab.' Trade the reversal that follows: after a sharp sweep of a swing point, look for stro...