Turtle Soup

What it measures

ICT’s Turtle Soup is a stop hunt: price goes past a reference high (or low), takes the liquidity sitting behind it and turns. The indicator looks for it like this, in the bearish case (the bullish one is the same, reversed): price sweeps a high, makes a turning high and closes back below the level. After that it has to move away with force, breaking the last three-candle low with a close.

The entry is deferred: the limit order waits on the rejection block, the zone that runs from the high’s wick to the highest body of the turning candles. It reads best on a 1-minute chart.

It’s a Pro plan indicator. It marks what has happened; it isn’t a recommendation or a buy or sell signal.

How it’s calculated

• Swept level: by default, the reference liquidity (the previous day’s and week’s high and low, sessions, equal highs and lows and the 15-minute ones). Under Pattern › “Which liquidity is swept” you can switch to “Any low or high on the chart”. Price has to go past it by at least 1 tick (“Minimum sweep beyond the level”).
• The turn: the three-candle high (one candle on each side) that price makes on passing the level, at most 10 candles after taking it (“Maximum candles from the sweep to the reversal”). The rejection is the first close back on the other side of the level; if a new extreme is made first, that one becomes the turn. With no close back there’s no Turtle Soup: it’s a breakout with a pause.
• The displacement: after the turn, price breaks the last three-candle low with a close, in a leg that starts at the turning high, at most 10 candles later. It’s turned off with “Require displacement: break a low (or high) after the turn”. The order is placed when that candle closes.
• Entry: the rejection block runs from the high’s wick to the highest body (open or close) of the turning candles; there has to be a wick of at least 1 tick. By default, “At the rejection block (deferred entry)”: the limit order sits at the edge where the body ends (“At the edge of the zone” under Entry and exit › “Entry”). With “At market when the reversal is confirmed” (Pattern › “Entry”) it enters at the close of the confirming candle.
• Stop: beyond the turning wick, plus 1 tick (“Stop ticks beyond its level”).
• Target: the nearest reference liquidity on the other side of the entry that hasn’t been taken yet: the previous day’s high and low (PDH, PDL) and the previous week’s (PWH, PWL), the highs and lows of the Asia, London, NY AM and NY PM sessions, equal highs and lows (EQH, EQL) and the 15-minute ones; also the chart’s own highs and lows (BSL, SSL), which only count as a target. You choose them under Liquidity. With no liquidity in sight, it isn’t traded. With “Target” set to “Fixed R”, the target is worth 2 R by default.
• Hours: the order is placed inside a window, in New York time. By default, “Window 1”, from 8:30 to 10:30; “Window 2” (from 2:00 to 5:00) and “Window 3” (from 13:30 to 16:00) are off. With “Only inside the windows” off, any hour counts.
• Which ones are traded: one at a time. While an order is placed or a trade is open, the others are discarded (“another in play”), and at most 1 is traded per window (from 1 to 5 under “Trades per window”). Mondays can be skipped with “Skip Mondays”.
• What cancels the order: the limit order waits at most 30 candles (“Candles the order stays open”); it’s cancelled when its window ends (with “Cancel the order when the window ends”, on by default) and it’s lost if price reaches the target without having entered (“ran off, no entry”).
• What is discarded: a stop less than 4 ticks from the entry (“Minimum risk”; “stop too close”) and whatever falls outside the windows (“out of hours”). “Minimum R to trade” is 0: no filter.
• If the target and the stop are both reached within one candle, there’s no way to know which came first: by default the order that platforms assume is used (“If the order within a candle is unknown”); it can also count as a loss or not count.
• Time frame: the pattern comes from the chart’s candles or, with “Time frame of the pattern”, from larger candles built from them. The order is always simulated with the chart’s candles, and 10 days are analyzed (“Days back”).

How to read it

• The swept level shows as a light grey line with its name (PDH, PDL, PWH, PWL, Asia, London, EQH, EQL…), from where it starts to the turn.
• The rejection block zone, from the wick to the body, is filled ice if bullish and pink if bearish, from the turning candle.
• The entry line, in violet, starts on the candle where the order is placed. When price enters, the target box (ice) and the stop box (pink) appear; while the order waits, the target and the stop are dashed lines. Bullish ones are ice, bearish ones pink.
• The text on each setup says “Turtle Soup”, the direction and its state: “order placed”, “in progress”, the result in R, “not filled” or “ran off, no entry”. Turn it off with “Write the text of each setup”.
• With “Show the ones not traded” the discarded ones appear too, fainter and with the reason (“out of hours”, “another in play”…).
• A results panel in a corner summarizes the trades of the loaded period. A help box inside the indicator, bottom left, sums it up on the chart itself; turn it off under Help › “Show how to use it”.

Which chart to put it on

Put it on a 1-minute chart: ICT trades the Turtle Soup on 1-minute candles, and the turn, the displacement and the rejection block take only a few candles.

The Asia and London session levels need candles from those hours: on a regular-hours chart they don’t exist, and on one with electronic trading hours (ETH) they do. With “Time frame of the pattern” you can look for the pattern on larger candles; the order is always simulated with the chart’s.

Built-in strategies

What the indicator already has inside and can mark for you on the chart. They show what has happened; they are not recommendations.

Adding it to the chart

In the chart bar, Indicators ▾ › More Indicators…. You’ll find it in the ICT category. It’s a Pro plan indicator. How to add and adjust an indicator is in Indicators.

Settings

Open them with the ⚙ on its row in Indicators ▾. All times are New York time.