Seek and Destroy Profile
Also: seek and destroy, seek & destroy, seek and destroy day, volatility pinball, high resistance liquidity profile
Visual Context Required
This concept requires chart visuals for full understanding.
The Seek and Destroy Profile is an intraday or intraweek market condition in which price alternates between taking out short-term highs and short-term lows in rapid succession, without sustaining any directional expansion. The algorithm "seeks" and "destroys" every near-term liquidity pool — both buy-side and sell-side — in sequence, then reverses, creating a chopping, range-bound price action that runs in both directions and stops traders out regardless of their directional bias. In its weekly form, "Seek and Destroy Bullish/Bearish Friday" is one of the twelve named weekly range profiles (profiles 9 and 10 in ICT's taxonomy). In this context, the week's price action does not form a clean directional profile (Tuesday Low, Wednesday High, etc.) but instead whips higher and lower on Thursday and/or Friday, running both buy-side and sell-side stops without a defined weekly high or low of the week forming on a specific day. This is most common during summer months (July–August) or in low-conviction macro environments. In its intraday form, Seek and Destroy describes a session in which the algorithm fails to produce a clean directional price run and instead creates back-and-forth liquidity raids. ICT uses "high resistance liquidity" as a near-synonym for intraday Seek and Destroy conditions — days where price delivery is sloppy and resistance to trend is high. These sessions are characterized by: absence of significant opening gap, Monday with no economic data, summer market conditions, or pre-NFP week mid-sessions (Wednesday–Friday). The primary utility of recognizing a Seek and Destroy profile is avoidance — ICT explicitly teaches that these sessions are unsuitable for trading and should be identified early so the trader closes charts and preserves capital.
Identification6
- Weekly: the market fails to form a clean Tuesday/Wednesday high or low. Instead, price takes out multiple prior highs and lows across the week without expanding in one direction.
- Weekly: Seek and Destroy Bullish Friday — price is nominally bullish (higher timeframe bias up) but the week structure is chaotic; highs and lows are being raided alternately.
- Weekly: most common in summer months (July–August) or election-year low-conviction periods.
- Intraday: price goes just above a short-term high, reverses, takes out the prior short-term low, then returns and takes out the most recently formed high — this back-and-forth pattern without expansion is the intraday Seek and Destroy condition.
- Intraday: absent a significant opening gap (ICT threshold: 45–75+ handles for NQ), expect high-resistance / Seek and Destroy conditions in the morning session.
- Intraday: Mondays with no economic data often produce high-resistance liquidity / Seek and Destroy sessions.
Entry2
- ICT's primary recommendation: do not trade Seek and Destroy profiles. They are conditions to sit out.
- Experienced traders may use Seek and Destroy intraday conditions to scalp opposing liquidity raids (take a raid above a short-term high, expect a raid of the opposing low shortly after), but this is explicitly flagged as high-risk and not suitable for new students.
Stop1
- N/A — primary recommendation is non-participation.
Target1
- N/A — primary recommendation is non-participation.
Invalidation2
- Profile is not present if price sustains a directional move from a PD array to the next opposing PD array without reversing back through the prior highs/lows.
- A large opening gap (75+ handles on NQ) dramatically reduces probability of Seek and Destroy — expect low-resistance directional delivery instead.
Inferred Conditions (Unvalidated)
- Seek and Destroy conditions are the market equivalent of a 'no-trade zone.' ICT consistently frames them as learning opportunities for chart reading, not for live trading.
- High-resistance liquidity is ICT's 2024 refinement of the Seek and Destroy characterization, applying it specifically to intraday sessions (especially Mondays without data) and linking it to opening gap size as a screening tool.
- Summer months statistically produce more Seek and Destroy profiles due to reduced institutional participation and compressed ranges.
- The weekly Seek and Destroy profile (profiles 9/10 in the weekly range taxonomy) differs from the intraday version: the weekly version describes a full-week failure to trend, while the intraday version describes a session-level failure to expand directionally.
ICT Quotes
"What is seek and destroy. Seek and Destroy is where the market will go just above a short term high, just to go back lower, to take out a old short term low, then come back up, take out that short term high that was just formed, and then vice versa, go back and forth, back and forth. And it kind of runs you over, even if you're in a position."
"The Seek and Destroy bullish Friday. This is a neutral or low probability market profile... it's better to avoid trading these conditions all together."
"Unfavorable market, which could eventually trade to a seek and destroy that where every high gets taken out, every low is taken out. That's what a seek and destroy the days."
"Large Range Days in the morning session, you get this type of action here. Usually indecisive. Sometimes it can just bang around, it can go seek and destroy. Where it takes the low out takes the initial high, then takes the lower low that was just made, and then comes back and makes a higher high and keeps hanging around in the middle."
"Today we're going to probably see high resistance liquidity conditions. Why is it going to be high resistance liquidity conditions? Because there's no economic data, and it's a Monday."
"Is it going to be just a trending day? Is it seek and destroy? You know, all those profiles I taught, they're all my mentorship videos on this YouTube channel."
"Far less likely to be like a seek and destroy or a high resistance liquidity profile."
Timeframes
Version History3 versions
66-ICT Mentorship Core Content - Month 7 - Short Term Trading Defining Weekly Range Profiles.srt
"The Seek and Destroy bullish Friday. This is a neutral or low probability market profile... it's better to avoid trading these conditions all together."
Initial introduction of Seek and Destroy as a named weekly range profile (profiles 9 and 10 in the weekly range taxonomy). Framed purely as a weekly structural condition.
ICT YT - 2024-08-12 - ICT 2024 Mentorship - Lecture 06.srt
"Seek and Destroy is where the market will go just above a short term high, just to go back lower, to take out a old short term low, then come back up, take out that short term high that was just forme…"
2024 expansion: ICT formally defines Seek and Destroy at the intraday level within the 2024 Mentorship. Applies the concept to single-session price action, not just weekly profiles.
ICT YT - 2024-10-28 - ICT 2024 Mentorship - Lecture 47.srt
"Today we're going to probably see high resistance liquidity conditions. Why is it going to be high resistance liquidity conditions? Because there's no economic data, and it's a Monday. So best trading…"
2024 late-year refinement: ICT pairs 'high resistance liquidity' as an equivalent/near-synonym for intraday Seek and Destroy, linking it to absence of economic data and Monday session characteristics. Opening gap size introduced as a filter (45–75+ handles = low resistance; absent gap = high resistance).
Notes
The Seek and Destroy Profile has two distinct scopes of application: 1. WEEKLY: profiles 9 and 10 in ICT's twelve weekly range profile taxonomy (originally defined in 2016/2017 content). These describe a full week failing to produce a clean directional bias, typically during summer low-liquidity periods. 2. INTRADAY: defined formally in 2024 Mentorship as any session where the algorithm raids both buy and sell side without sustaining directional expansion. "High resistance liquidity" (HRLR counterpart) is the 2024 label for intraday S&D conditions. It is the opposite of "low resistance liquidity run" (LRLR). ICT frames opening gap magnitude as the primary screening tool: large gap (75+ NQ handles) = LRLR expected; small/absent gap = high resistance / Seek and Destroy expected. See also: weekly-range-profile, low-resistance-liquidity-run, market-efficiency-paradigm, daily-bias-framework.
Asymmetry Notes
The weekly Seek and Destroy profile has two named variants (Bullish Friday, Bearish Friday), though both are characterized by chaotic back-and-forth price action rather than directional expansion. Intraday Seek and Destroy is symmetrical in that it raids both buy and sell side without directional bias. Avoidance recommendation applies in both variants.