Trading & Crypto

7 Steps I Use to Find Trading Entries on Any Chart

How I Find My Trading Entries | Trading Course 003

Video: How I Find My Trading Entries | Trading Course 003

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· based on the channel SCI

Finding a trading entry means locating the exact candle where a marked-up level gets swept, price displaces away with force, and a correction gives you a defined risk point to trade from. Everything else — indicators, alerts, opinions — is secondary to that sequence. The full walkthrough of this process comes from the SCI trading course episode "How I Find My Trading Entries," and the free companion material is posted at Trades By Sci on Instagram, where setups are shared alongside the course drops.

Most traders lose money not because they pick the wrong direction, but because they enter at the wrong moment inside a correct idea. This article breaks the entry process into seven concrete steps you can repeat on any chart, in any market, in any session.

What an entry actually is in practical trading terms

An entry is a decision to accept a known risk in exchange for a defined target, taken at a specific price level that the market has already proven it cares about. That definition matters, because it removes the two most common mistakes: entering because a candle "looks strong," and entering because you are bored or afraid of missing the move.

In the SCI approach, every entry traces back to a markup. You mark the levels where price previously reversed, where liquidity obviously sits, and where the higher-timeframe trend is pointing. Without a markup, an entry is a guess. With a markup, an entry becomes a reaction to a specific event you were already waiting for.

Step 1: Mark up the chart before the session starts

Markup is preparation, not prediction. You draw the key swing highs and lows, the obvious equal highs and equal lows where stop orders are clustered, and the session ranges that price has been respecting. On XAUUSD, that usually means marking Asian and London ranges before New York opens.

The goal is a short list of levels — usually three to five — that you would actually trade from. If your chart has twenty lines on it, you have no plan; you have decoration. A clean markup answers one question in advance: "If price arrives here, what do I expect to happen next?"

Step 2: Wait for liquidity to be swept

A sweep is the market taking out a level where retail stops are resting, then failing to continue in that direction. Equal lows get run, the breakout sellers pile in, and price immediately reverses. That reversal is the raw material of an entry.

The important detail is the failure, not the break. A level that breaks and keeps going is a trend continuation; a level that breaks and snaps back is a sweep. You only get paid on the second one, and you only recognise it if you did the markup work first.

Step 3: Confirm displacement and the ICC structure

The ICC framework — Indication, Correction, Continuation — describes how a real move is built. Indication is the first aggressive push that shows intent. Correction is the pullback that traps late traders and creates the entry zone. Continuation is the expansion you are trying to capture.

Displacement is the visible evidence of Indication: large-bodied candles, minimal overlap, price leaving a range fast. If the move away from the swept level is slow, overlapping and hesitant, there is no displacement, and there is no trade. This single filter removes a large share of low-quality setups before they cost you anything.

Step 4: Time the entry instead of chasing the move

Entry timing is the skill that looks trivial until real money is on the line. The same setup entered during a dead session and during the New York open produces completely different results, because liquidity and volatility are not constant. Traders who work night shifts often report clearer decisions in low-volume hours — fewer impulses, slower charts, better processing — but the expansion that pays usually arrives with the session open.

Practically, timing means three rules: trade the session that matches your strategy, wait for the correction to complete rather than buying the first push, and accept that missing an entry is free while a bad entry is expensive.

Step 5: Define risk before you define reward

Position size and stop placement are decided before the order is placed, never adjusted afterwards. A common pattern in the community is traders who understood the concepts, made money, then gave a large part of it back through poor risk management and emotional decisions. The setup was right; the sizing was wrong.

A workable default: risk a fixed small percentage per trade, place the stop where the idea is genuinely invalidated — beyond the sweep, not at a round number — and let the target be the next marked level. If the stop has to be widened to keep the trade alive, the entry was wrong.

Step 6: Journal the entry, not just the result

A journal that only records profit and loss teaches you nothing. Record the level, the sweep, whether displacement appeared, the session, the size, and how you felt at the moment of clicking. After twenty or thirty entries, patterns appear: you will see which conditions actually produce your winners and which are just comfortable habits.

This is also where you catch the errors that separate a break-even trader from a profitable one. Most people do not need a new strategy; they need to stop taking the three or four setups that consistently fail for them.

Step 7: Repeat the process until it is boring

The final step is repetition without improvisation. Markup, sweep, displacement, correction, entry, fixed risk, journal. When the sequence becomes mechanical, the emotional charge around each trade drops, and decisions get faster and cleaner.

Simplicity is the point. The traders who last are not running the most complicated charts; they are running the same short checklist every session until it stops feeling like a gamble.

Common questions traders ask about entries

A few recurring doubts come up whenever this material is discussed. Does the framework work outside forex? Yes — the sweep-and-displacement logic applies to indices, crypto and commodities, though session timing changes. Do you need indicators? No, price and levels are enough; indicators mostly add delay. How many setups per day? Usually one or two quality entries, and often zero — forcing a third trade is a discipline problem, not a strategy problem. And can you trade around a full-time job? Yes, by picking one session and one or two instruments instead of watching everything.

Final thoughts on building a repeatable entry process

Entries are not found by scanning for patterns; they are found by preparing levels, waiting for liquidity to be taken, and acting only when displacement confirms the intent. The seven steps above are a filter as much as a method — most of their value comes from the setups they stop you from taking. The SCI channel built this course to make that process visible trade by trade, and the ongoing community discussion is where most of the practical refinements come from. Follow along at Trades By Sci on Instagram for new course episodes and live examples, and treat every entry as a decision you can explain before you take it.

Key takeaways

  • Entries are found after a markup, a liquidity sweep and displacement — not from a random indicator signal.
  • The ICC framework (Indication, Correction, Continuation) is the structure behind every entry decision.
  • Entry timing is a separate skill from direction: the same idea can win or lose depending on when you click.
  • XAUUSD and New York session liquidity are the core hunting ground in the SCI course material.
  • Risk per trade and position size must be fixed before the entry, never after the loss.

Questions & answers

Do I need indicators to find trading entries?

No. The process relies on marked levels, liquidity sweeps and displacement, all of which are visible on a clean price chart. Indicators mostly add lag and give you a second opinion you do not need when the level and the reaction already tell the story.

How many entries should I take per day?

One or two quality setups is typical, and zero is a perfectly normal day. The framework is a filter, so if the sweep or the displacement is missing, the correct action is to wait rather than to force a trade.

Can I trade this around a full-time job or night shifts?

Yes, if you commit to one session and a small watchlist instead of monitoring everything. Some traders report clearer decisions in quiet, low-volume hours, but the expansion that produces most of the reward usually arrives with the main session open.

Why do traders who understand the concepts still lose money?

Usually because of risk management and emotion rather than analysis. Sizing too large, widening a stop to keep a trade alive, or taking a third setup out of boredom turns a correct read of the market into a losing account.

Source: How I Find My Trading Entries | Trading Course 003 · Markdown version

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