ICT Silver Bullet strategy: what it is and how traders use it

The ICT Silver Bullet is a short-window trading setup taught by Michael Huddleston, known as the Inner Circle Trader. Inside one of three set hours of the day, a trader waits for price to run a nearby high or low, then looks for a single entry in a fair value gap, aiming for the opposite pool of liquidity.

In short

• The ICT Silver Bullet is a one-hour version of an ICT setup: a liquidity run, a fast move away that leaves a fair value gap (FVG), and one entry on a return to that gap.
• The three windows are 3:00 to 4:00 am, 10:00 to 11:00 am and 2:00 to 3:00 pm New York time. Outside them, the setup is not a Silver Bullet in the usual teaching.
• The target is the next obvious pool of liquidity on the other side, such as the previous session's high or low, and many teachers want at least 10 to 15 pips of room before they take the trade.
• Most windows produce no clean setup. Skipping a window is part of the method, and so is limiting yourself to one trade in each.
• On a $50,000 Classic account, a 30-pip stop on 1.66 lots of GBP/USD risks about $498, around a fifth of the $2,500 daily loss limit.

What is the ICT Silver Bullet strategy?

The ICT Silver Bullet is a rule-based entry model that confines trading to three one-hour windows. Inside a window you need a sweep of a recent high or low, a move away that leaves a fair value gap, and an entry in that gap with a target at the opposite liquidity.

The idea behind it is narrow on purpose. Instead of watching charts all day, you look for one clean sequence in a short time. The sweep supplies the direction, because a run above a high suggests the buy stops there have been used, and the gap supplies the entry price. The target is the other side of the range. Each piece is covered in its own guide: the liquidity sweep guide explains the first step and the fair value gap guide the second. Our ICT trading guide shows where the Silver Bullet sits among the wider ICT concepts, so this page concentrates on the setup itself.

The name is a branding choice. Nothing about the hour is magic, and teachers describe the windows as times when price often moves with intent, not as times when a trade is likely to win.

What are the Silver Bullet times?

The three windows are 3:00 to 4:00 am, 10:00 to 11:00 am and 2:00 to 3:00 pm, all in New York time. They are usually called the London open, the New York AM and the New York PM Silver Bullet. In UK time, for most of the year, they are 8:00 to 9:00 am, 3:00 to 4:00 pm and 7:00 to 8:00 pm.

Two details cause mistakes. First, the clock changes of the US and the UK fall on different dates. The UK moves on the last Sunday of March and October and the US on the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday of November. In the weeks between, New York is four hours behind London, not five, and every UK time above moves an hour earlier. Second, a chart in your platform's server time can sit anywhere, so convert before you mark a window.

The 10:00 to 11:00 am window is the one most traders start with. It follows the 8:30 am New York release time of many US data reports, and the London session's high and low are already on the chart as targets. The 3:00 to 4:00 am window falls in the London morning, and the 2:00 to 3:00 pm window is the quietest of the three in many markets. Teachers disagree about which suits which pair, and nobody has published a reliable ranking, so test the windows on the symbol you trade.

How does a Silver Bullet setup work?

A Silver Bullet setup works in four steps: mark the liquidity, wait for a sweep inside the window, find the fair value gap the move away leaves, and enter on a return to it. The stop sits beyond the sweep and the target at the opposite liquidity.

Step one happens before the window opens. Mark the highs and lows traders can see: the previous session's high and low, equal highs or lows, and the high and low of the last few hours. These are the draw on liquidity, the price levels the market is likely to be attracted to.

Step two is the sweep. Inside the hour, price pushes through one of those levels and then comes back. A run above a high that closes back below it points to a sell setup, because the buy stops above were taken and nothing was left to carry price higher. The mirror image points to a buy. A candle that runs through and keeps closing beyond the level is a breakout, and the setup is off.

Step three is displacement, a fast move away from the sweep with large candles. A fair value gap is the visible sign of it: three candles where the wicks of the first and third do not overlap. On a 1-minute or 5-minute chart you look for the first such gap after the sweep and in the direction of the new bias.

Step four is the entry. Place a limit order inside the gap, at its edge or its midpoint, and put the stop beyond the sweep's extreme. If price never returns to the gap, there is no trade. Most teachers then close the position by the end of the hour or the end of the session if it has not reached the target, though they differ on this, and you should write your own rule for it.

Which chart timeframe do Silver Bullet traders use?

Silver Bullet traders mostly use the 1-minute and 5-minute charts for the entry, with the 15-minute or 1-hour chart for the levels. The short window is why: an hour gives about 12 five-minute candles, which is enough to see a sweep and a gap form.

A common sequence is to mark liquidity and a bias on the 15-minute chart, then drop to the 5-minute chart when the window opens. The 1-minute chart gives smaller gaps and tighter stops, and it also gives more false signals and more noise from spreads and slippage. On a quiet minute, a 2-pip spread is a large share of a 6-pip gap.

Higher timeframe context matters to many traders. If the 1-hour chart is in a clear uptrend and the window produces a sell setup against it, some will skip it. Others trade it as a pullback with a nearer target. Neither is a rule of the method itself, so decide yours before you start. The break of structure on the lower timeframe, covered in the break of structure guide, is another filter some add: they want a close beyond the last minor swing after the sweep, not just a gap.

How do you trade the Silver Bullet?

To trade the Silver Bullet, wait for the window, mark the sweep and the first fair value gap after it, place a limit order in the gap with the stop beyond the sweep, and set the target at the opposite liquidity. If no order has filled by the end of the hour, cancel it.

Some rules help keep the method testable:

1. Trade only inside the three windows, and only take one setup per window.
2. Require a sweep of a marked level, not any small high or low.
3. Require displacement: the move away should be faster than the candles before it.
4. Enter only on the first gap after the sweep. A third or fourth gap is usually a different story.
5. Reject trades where the room to the target is smaller than your minimum, for example 15 pips.
6. Decide in advance what happens at the end of the hour.

Where to put the entry inside the gap is a choice with a cost. The gap's near edge fills more often but gives a larger stop. The far edge or the midpoint gives a smaller stop but fills less often. The worked example below shows the numbers for two stop choices, which is the more useful comparison than argument about edges. Related ideas such as the order block can sit under the gap and give an alternative entry, and traders who use smart money concepts often require that a gap and a block agree.

What does a Silver Bullet trade look like with real numbers?

This example is a short trade on a 5-minute GBP/USD chart in the New York AM window, for a $50,000 account risking 1% per trade, which is $500. One standard lot of GBP/USD moves $10 per pip. The prices are made up for the illustration.

1. Before the window, mark the London session high at 1.3045 and the previous day's low at 1.2962.
2. At 10:07 am New York time a 5-minute candle trades to 1.3053 and closes at 1.3041. That is 8 pips above the London high, with a close back inside. It is the sweep.
3. The next two candles fall hard. The first of the three has a low of 1.3030, the third has a high of 1.3020. The bearish fair value gap runs from 1.3020 to 1.3030, 10 pips, with a midpoint of 1.3025.
4. Place a sell limit at 1.3025 and a stop at 1.3055, 2 pips above the sweep high. The risk is 30 pips.
5. Size: $500 divided by (30 pips × $10) is 1.67 lots. Round down to 1.66 lots, so each pip is worth $16.60 and the risk is 30 × $16.60 = $498.
6. Set the target at 1.2965, 3 pips above the previous day's low. That is 60 pips of room, twice the risk, and the reward at the target is 60 × $16.60 = $996.

Suppose price returns to 1.3025 at 10:21 am and reaches 1.2965 at 11:40 am. The trade makes $996 before costs, and it was held past the window. If instead a 5-minute candle closes at 1.3056, above the stop, the trade loses $498. If price had never come back to 1.3025 before 11:00 am, the order is cancelled and nothing is lost.

Many traders try a tighter stop. The stop could go at 1.3040, above the high of the displacement candle's start, which is only 15 pips away.

The tighter stop looks better on paper, but it sits inside the area where price often retraces before moving on, so it is hit far more often. Count the stops as well as the targets, and include costs, before preferring it. Simulated trades carry trading costs, as they would on a live account: a commission when a trade opens and when it closes, a price markup on some symbols, and holding costs on positions kept overnight.

How this works on CMC Funded

On a $50,000 Classic account the daily loss limit is $2,500 on the first day, which is 5% of that day's starting equity and is measured on equity. The $498 trade above uses about a fifth of it. The maximum loss floor is $45,000, fixed at 10% below the starting balance.

The Silver Bullet allows up to three trades in a day, one per window. Three stop-outs at $498 cost $1,494, which is 60% of the Classic limit and 75% of the $2,000 limit on a $50,000 Direct account (the Direct limit is 4% of the day's starting equity). Five stop-outs would cost $2,490, leaving $10 of a Classic day's allowance before costs, and reaching the limit ends the account with no warning stage. A strict one-trade-per-window rule works as a daily cap.

Because open positions count against the limit, a trade that is working can still hurt. If you are in the first trade when the second window opens, its floating loss counts against the same $2,500. The limit is worked out again at the start of each day from that day's equity, and an unused allowance does not carry over.

Holding past the window is allowed, with holding costs if the position stays open overnight, and there is no time limit on the account. News trading is allowed, which matters because the 10:00 am window follows US data releases. For scale, the Phase 1 profit target on Classic is 8%, which is $4,000 on $50,000. Four winners of $996 would come to $3,984, just short, and each phase needs at least 3 trading days. Use the position size calculator to size from your stop, and read the full rules before trading.

Does the ICT Silver Bullet work?

No public record shows that the Silver Bullet makes money, and there is no reliable figure for how often it wins. The setup is specific enough to test on your own charts, which is more than can be said for many ICT ideas, but a test is needed because the claims for it come from teachers, not from audited results.

Several things work against any claimed win rate. The definition varies: one teacher counts any gap after any sweep, another needs displacement and a structure break. The result depends on the symbol, because the windows suit the pairs and indices with most activity at that hour. Chart history shows the setups that worked, and live you must decide while the gap is forming. With a 2:1 target you need to win more than one trade in three, before costs, to come out ahead. Costs matter more on a short-window method because the stops and gaps are small.

A fair test uses fixed rules. Pick one symbol and one window, define the sweep and the gap in writing, and record every setup that meets the definition, including the messy ones as well as the clean ones. Fifty setups make a fair start. Our trading journal template guide lays out what to record.

Common mistakes

• Treating every sweep as a Silver Bullet. The sweep must be of a level you marked before the window, and it must happen inside the window.
• Taking a second or third gap. After the first gap is missed, the setup has changed, and chasing it is the classic way to lose twice in one hour.
• Ignoring the clock changes. For one or two weeks each spring and autumn the UK and New York offsets differ, and a window marked an hour late is a different setup.
• Entering without room to the target. If the opposite liquidity is 8 pips away, the costs on the trade may eat most of it.
• Moving the stop. On the 1.66-lot trade, moving the stop from 1.3055 to 1.3085 changes the loss from 30 pips × $16.60 = $498 to 60 pips × $16.60 = $996, double the intended risk.
• Holding a losing trade into the next window. A new window starts a new setup, and an old position counts against the daily limit while you look at it.
• Trading right through a data release because it falls in the window. A spike on the release can run through gaps and stops alike.

Questions traders ask

Is the Silver Bullet the same as a kill zone?

Not exactly. A kill zone is a wide window, such as the London open from 2:00 to 5:00 am New York time, in which ICT traders look for setups of any kind. The Silver Bullet is a one-hour window, sitting inside or near a kill zone, with one fixed setup in it.

Does the Silver Bullet work on indices and gold?

Traders use it on indices such as the Nasdaq 100 and the Dow, and on gold, as well as on forex pairs, because the windows suit markets that are active at those hours. The pip sizes, spreads and gap sizes differ, so rebuild your minimum room and your sizing for each symbol and test again.

How many trades should you take in a Silver Bullet window?

Most teachers say one. The first clean gap after the sweep is the setup, and later gaps in the same hour are treated as a new situation. One trade per window also caps a day at three trades, which keeps losses easy to count against a daily loss limit.

Can you use the Silver Bullet without the sweep?

Some traders do and call it a gap entry. The sweep is what gives the setup its direction and its stop, so without it you have no reason to prefer a buy or a sell. If you drop it, test the new version separately, because results from the full setup do not carry over.

Next steps

The Academy lesson on sessions and kill zones shows how to mark the windows on a chart. The optimal trade entry guide covers a retracement band that some traders use to refine the gap entry, and the ICT Power of Three guide looks at the daily pattern that the sweep sits inside. Size every trade from its stop with the position size calculator and read the daily and maximum loss limits on the rules page.

You can compare the Classic and Direct routes on the challenges page.