Market Structure (ICT)
Judas Swing
A false push right at the session open that reverses hard into the real direction of the session, trapping anyone who chased the first move.
Chaser vs. Patient: race two hypothetical entries
Every session opens and immediately pushes one direction for the first several bars. You control the Chaser: click "Chase the push" any time during that early window to enter in whatever direction price is moving at that instant. The Patient entry is fully mechanical, it only fires if price closes back through the open by a set distance, opposite the early push, which is this tool's live definition of a confirmed reversal. Neither entry is scripted to win. Watch both running P&Ls update bar by bar off the same real candles.
Session opening. Watch which way the first push goes.
Chaser
No entry yet
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Patient (mechanical reversal rule)
Watching for reversal confirmation…
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How it works
- The setup is the open, not a level. Judas Swing is specifically about the first several bars after a session open (London or New York are the classic ones). A liquidity sweep can happen at any prior swing high or low at any time of day, this only cares about direction right after the bell.
- The push has to happen first. This tool tracks the largest move away from the open price during the first six bars and calls that the push, whichever direction it lands in.
- Confirmation is a close, not a wick. The mechanical rule only fires once a later bar closes back through the open, on the opposite side of the push, by a fixed distance. A wick alone does not count, the same way a single volatile print does not confirm a reversal.
- Not every session has one. Sometimes the early push is the real direction of the session and it never reverses. The Patient entry sits out those sessions entirely, which is the honest outcome, not a bug.
- Two entries, two separate records. The Chaser's win rate and the Patient's win rate are tracked independently across every session you run, so the comparison is built from real outcomes, not a single dramatic example.
Where this breaks
A price chart can show the pattern, it cannot prove intent
This tool can show you a documented pattern in simulated price behavior: an early push that reverses on a confirmed close often enough to matter. What it cannot do, and what no retail price chart can do, is prove that the initial push was a deliberate move to trigger stops rather than an ordinary opening-range swing that happened to fail. Calling every reversed open a "Judas Swing" driven by institutional intent is a claim about who was trading and why, not something a candle chart can verify. The mechanical rule here also has a real failure mode on its own terms: in a genuinely trending session, an early pullback can satisfy the same close-through-the-open threshold without the trend actually reversing, which is exactly the kind of session where the Patient entry gets stopped out chasing a reversal that was never really there.