How to Find Trading Entries in 2026 Using the ICC Concept From SCI

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

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Oct 30, 2026 · based on the channel SCI

Finding trading entries is the process of locating the exact price level where a market structure shift, a markup of that structure, and a confirmation candle all line up, so that risk stays small and the target stays far. In the ICC concept taught by the SCI channel, that means waiting for structure to break, marking the zone it leaves behind, and only then executing. The full walkthrough sits in the video "How I Find My Trading Entries | Trading Course 003", and the author keeps his trade feed and course updates at tradesbysci on Instagram.

Why entry timing is a skill and not a signal

An entry is a decision about location, and location is what separates a repeatable process from a lucky click. Two traders can take the same direction on the same instrument and get completely different results simply because one entered at the edge of a marked zone and the other entered in the middle of nowhere. This is the idea behind the ICC framework: the market creates structure, that structure gets broken, and the broken structure becomes the reference point for the next move.

A practical way to think about it:

1. Structure forms. Price makes a swing high or swing low that other traders can see.
2. Structure breaks. Price closes through that swing with intent, not with a wick.
3. Structure gets marked. The zone left behind by the break becomes your area of interest.
4. Price returns. You wait for price to come back into the marked area instead of chasing it.
5. Confirmation appears. Only then do you execute, with a stop behind the zone and a target at the next structural level.

Most beginners skip steps two and four. They see a big candle and enter immediately, which is why their stop sits in the middle of noise and gets hit before the real move begins.

Reading market structure before you look for a markup

Market structure is the sequence of highs and lows that tells you who is currently in control, and you cannot mark anything useful until you can read it. On a clean chart, an uptrend is a series of higher highs and higher lows; a downtrend is the reverse. When that sequence breaks, the market is telling you that the previous side has lost control, at least temporarily.

The practical steps:

1. Drop to a lower timeframe and identify the most recent impulse leg, not every wiggle.
2. Mark the swing point that the impulse left behind.
3. Wait for a close beyond that swing point, not just a touch.
4. Re-draw the zone only when a new structural break occurs.

On instruments like XAUUSD, where volatility can expand quickly during the New York session, structure can shift several times in an hour. That is not a reason to mark everything. The rule is to keep only the zone that produced the most recent break, because that is the level the market is most likely to respect on a return.

Marking the zone that price actually respects

A markup is only useful if price reacts to it, and the quality of the markup matters more than the number of markups on your chart. A zone drawn from a single wick is weak. A zone drawn from a break that left an imbalance, a gap, or a strong displacement candle is strong, because it shows where orders were left unfilled.

How to build a markup that holds up:

1. Use the body of the displacement candle as the core of the zone, and the wick as the outer edge.
2. Keep the zone narrow. If it spans half the chart, it will trigger on everything and mean nothing.
3. Mark the zone on the timeframe where the break happened, then drop down one level for execution.
4. Delete the zone once price closes through it in the opposite direction, because the reason for the markup no longer exists.

This is also where the difference between a markup and a random support line becomes obvious. A support line is drawn because price bounced there once. A markup is drawn because price broke structure there, which is a different and more specific event.

Confirmation, execution and where the stop goes

Confirmation is the final filter that turns a marked zone into a trade, and it exists to stop you from entering into a market that is still moving against you. The confirmation does not need to be complicated. A lower-timeframe structure shift inside the zone, a rejection wick, or a decisive close back in the direction of the original break are all valid.

Execution rules that keep the process consistent:

1. Enter only when price is inside the marked zone, never in the middle of the range between zones.
2. Place the stop beyond the far edge of the zone, not at a fixed number of pips.
3. Set the first target at the next structural level, and only extend it if the market keeps breaking structure in your favour.
4. Size the position so that the distance to the stop equals a fixed percentage of the account, not a fixed lot size.

Viewers of the SCI course repeatedly describe the same turning point: their entries improved once they stopped chasing and started waiting for price to return into a marked area. The same viewers also describe the same failure mode, which is risking too much on a single idea and letting emotion override the plan. Entry logic and risk logic have to be built together, because a perfect entry with a reckless size still ends the same way.

Common questions traders ask about entries

One recurring question is how many markups should be on a chart at once. In practice, one active zone per timeframe is enough, because the most recent structural break is the one the market is currently responding to. Stacking five zones on a chart usually means you have not decided which timeframe you are trading.

Another recurring question is what to do when price never returns to the zone. The answer is that you do nothing. A missed trade costs nothing, while a forced trade in the middle of a range costs real money. The market produces new structural breaks constantly, and waiting for the next clean setup is part of the edge, not a failure of it.

A third question is how entries change across sessions. During low-volume hours, price tends to move more slowly and structure is easier to read, which is why some traders prefer those windows even if the moves are smaller. During high-volume hours, the same setup appears faster and requires quicker decisions, so the timeframe you execute on should match the session you are actually trading.

Useful links from the SCI course

All of the resources referenced in the course are listed below, and the first one is the author's main channel for updates and course material.

• Instagram, main account and course updates: https://www.instagram.com/tradesbysci
• Live trades: https://x.com/tradesbysci
• Platform used for trading: https://tinyurl.com/hideoutsci
• Discord community: https://discord.gg/tradesbysci
• Telegram, ICC Mafia: https://t.me/iccmafia

Final thoughts on building a repeatable entry process

The ICC approach to entries is not a secret indicator, it is a sequence: structure breaks, structure gets marked, price returns, confirmation triggers the trade. Traders who rewatched the previous SCI course multiple times report that the entries themselves were rarely the problem, and that their hardest lessons came from position sizing and emotional decisions. That is the honest order of operations: a clean entry with disciplined risk survives a losing streak, while a sloppy entry with oversized risk does not survive one bad day. The SCI channel is the author of this breakdown, and Trading Course 003 is where the entry logic is demonstrated step by step. If you want to follow the series and the live trade feed, start at tradesbysci on Instagram.

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