smart money concepts - actual value or repackaged TA with new jargon?
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honest question. SMC, ICT methodology, order blocks, FVGs, liquidity sweeps, BOS, CHoCH - i tried to learn it all over the last year. there are sections that genuinely added to my trading (the concept of liquidity grabs, internal range liquidity), and sections that feel like classical TA with a fancy name (order blocks = supply/demand zones with extra rules).
is there actually new alpha here or is the whole thing a marketing layer over what we already knew? curious from people who actually traded both classic TA AND SMC seriously.
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spent a year deep in SMC. honest take: 20% genuinely useful (liquidity concept, where stops accumulate is real), 50% repackaged classical TA, 30% complete BS that exists because creators needed more 'concepts' to fill a course. the liquidity framing is the actual edge for me.
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this matches my experience. learning SMC's view of 'where do stop hunts happen' was the actual big improvement. the rest was relabeling. but its not worthless - sometimes new language makes old ideas click.
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what does BOS and CHoCH mean? i keep seeing these
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BOS = break of structure (price breaks a recent swing high/low confirming trend continuation). CHoCH = change of character (price breaks an opposite swing showing trend may be ending). basically renamed 'higher high broken' and 'trend reversal signal' but framed within a market structure framework. understandable terms once you map them to old TA concepts.
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im going to push back. yes a lot is rebranded. but the formal framework of internal range liquidity vs external range liquidity gave me a way to anticipate where price moves WITHIN a range that classical TA never gave me cleanly. its not all BS.
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i learned SMC, hated it, went back to clean classical TA, and im way more profitable now. each their own honestly. but the FOMO around it was unreal in 2024-2025
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