ICT Post-PPI NQ Commentary: July 15, 2026 Review

How we researched this article

BestProps used document-based research from primary firm sources, checked September 14, 2026. The complete source list, scope, limitations, and commercial-state record appear near the end of this article.

Editorial methodology Report a correction

“Post PPI NQ Futures Commentary Weekly Analysis Delivered – 07/15/2026” is a 27-minute recording published by The Inner Circle Trader on Wednesday, July 15, 2026. In it, ICT reviews his own guidance for trading NQ around that morning’s 8:30 a.m. Producer Price Index release, explains the two conditional paths he says he gave beforehand, and narrates how he built and managed a short position after the release. This page is a transcript-grounded review: the audio was transcribed in full, the transcript duration matches the video, and each point below is tied to the timestamp where it is said. The opening of the recording contains about a minute of silence before he begins.

Two limits matter here more than usual. The recording is a narration of a session, not a verified record: no order tickets, fills, position sizes, account statements or chart screenshots are available in an audio transcript, and several price levels are recognition-uncertain. Everything ICT describes about his entries, partial exits and the week’s result is therefore attributed to him rather than presented as performance verified from account statements or trade records.

The two paths he says he gave before the release

ICT opens by reminding viewers of guidance he says he gave earlier that morning, and the substance of it is conditional. Because the PPI number was due at 8:30 a.m., he says he gave two parameters rather than a single direction, on the logic that whichever area price reached first would act as the counterparty to the other (1:15, 1:31, 1:40). The two routes were a decline to a lower area followed by a push into the New Week Opening Gap, or a move into that gap first and then a decline into the lower area (1:49, 1:56). He says he had more interest in the lower route because the price action above it looked weak (2:02).

He illustrates that weakness with an analogy rather than a measurement: a large structure of price action held up by one narrow piece of support, which he compares to a building resting on a single two-by-four, and concludes it was likely to be revisited (2:20, 2:44). He also says sell-side liquidity was resting below the prior lows (2:53). He then states plainly that he had family commitments that day, could not stay with the idea while it developed, and simply used the parameters he had given (3:14, 3:22).

He refers repeatedly to other recordings for those levels — the lectures from Monday and Tuesday, and a shorter review video from that morning — which are separate uploads and not part of the source reviewed here (4:27, 12:12).

What he says happened at 8:30, and the level that mattered

The central reference in his reading is the New Week Opening Gap. He calls its midpoint “consequent encroachment” and says his interest was in seeing the 8:30 release used as a Judas swing — an initial move that takes liquidity before reversing (3:42, 3:52). In the version he preferred, a drop into the lower area would have been the Judas swing up into the gap and then a lower run; in the version that unfolded, he says price rallied on the release and never reached the gap’s midpoint, which he treats as confirmation for the bearish side of his plan (4:03, 4:08, 4:20).

He describes the post-release advance as “staging”: price runs up, creates a short-term high, that liquidity is taken, and the highs become counterparties for shorts because buy stops sit above them (4:42, 4:50, 5:05, 5:17). That is his market model. The transcript contains no order-flow, positioning or depth data, so the claim that specific stops were absorbed by larger sellers cannot be verified from this source.

The part of the recording with the broadest value

Immediately after describing that model, ICT asks the obvious question — how do you know price will not simply continue higher — and answers it against himself: “You aren’t going to know. That’s why you have to use a stop loss. That’s why you don’t over leverage” (5:54, 6:01, 6:06). He follows it with the same admission in stronger form later: nobody knows where an inflation release will take price initially, and he says he has been wrong more often than right when trying to predict the first move off these reports, after 33 years of trading (11:26, 11:40).

A young trader seated at a modest home desk in early morning light, reviewing an abstract candlestick chart on a monitor and taking notes in a notebook, with a pencil, a mug and a small desk clock beside the keyboard.

The process he puts in place of prediction is a set of pre-written conditions: if price does one thing he does that, and if it does the other he does the alternative (9:55, 10:02, 10:09). He also states that waiting for the reaction instead of pre-committing to a direction is the practical response to that uncertainty, and that his tool list is nothing more than open, high, low, close and the time axis, with experience being the rest (11:56, 8:53, 9:17).

Where he wanted to be short, and why below the midpoint

His stated plan was to build shorts inside the lower part of the New Week Opening Gap, between its lower quadrant and an upper subdivision, deliberately short of the halfway point (8:17, 8:26, 8:33). His reasoning is his own order-flow rule: if the market is bearish, selling in the lower half is what denies price the ability to trespass through the upper half with closing bodies (13:15, 13:34). He adds that because the week’s upside objective had already been met on Monday’s analysis, he was finished being interested in the bullish side, while explicitly refusing to claim a top or that price could not go higher (13:44, 14:00, 14:06).

How this review separates the plan from the reaction

A news-day recording is easy to read backwards, so the structure used here keeps the two halves apart: establish the scheduled release time from the release calendar rather than from the video, restate the plan as it was given before the release, mark the levels he refers to, record what he says happened afterwards, and keep hindsight out of the original plan. The schematic below draws that order. It is a review method, not something ICT teaches in the recording.

AI-generated educational flowchart with five numbered step cards joined by arrows reading 1 Confirm the Release Time, 2 State the Pre-Release Plan, 3 Mark the Reference Levels, 4 Record the Immediate Reaction, and 5 Separate Hindsight from the Plan, above a caption bar reading PLAN FIRST - REACTION SECOND - NO INVENTED RESULTS.

The execution he narrates

From about 12:56 onwards, ICT narrates building a short position inside that lower portion of the gap and adding to it as swing highs formed, describing the process as pyramiding into what he expected to be a retail-buying trap (14:37, 14:57). He says price traded to his stop price but that the spread and the pairing of orders did not permit the execution, a piece of luck he calls “mercy” (15:11, 15:18, 15:31).

He then walks through the lower-time-frame references he was trading against — what he calls an inversion fair value gap, the 9:30 whiplash, a bearish suspension block, and reactions from the gap’s subdivisions where he says price stopped to the tick (16:03, 16:15, 16:45, 17:04). Some of the numbers he reads off the chart in this section come through the automated transcript inconsistently, so no price level is reproduced here; the structure is what can be reported reliably.

The management he describes is incremental: a small partial below a short-term low, another partial lower, and one contract taken off simply because he had started to feel concern about the trade — his stated remedy for discomfort being either to reduce or to exit rather than to sit with it (17:56, 18:01, 18:10, 18:25). He says he reduced the position to 14 of 16 contracts before leaving for the day, with the limit order sitting just below the single candle he had identified as the only support, and that price then continued into the previous day’s fair value gap, that inefficiency and a daily volume imbalance (19:26, 19:32, 19:50, 20:12, 20:49).

None of that is verifiable from the source: a transcript cannot show the position, the fills, the partials or the account, and the recording contains no statement of a net result. Treat the whole sequence as the speaker’s account of his own trading.

His closing assessment of the week

ICT says the daily imbalance suggested a little more weakness ahead, but states he is personally finished executing for the week, that he did well for the week, and that he will go back to teaching lectures for the remaining days (21:21, 21:30, 21:37). He then challenges anyone who thinks the material is rebranded: they are invited to find a supposedly better trader who calls moves in public and executes near the highs as he says he does (21:50, 22:02, 22:12). That is a claim about his own record; the earlier predictions it refers to are in other videos and no verified performance data appears in this source.

The last substantive part is about how long the skill takes. He tells students not to be discouraged that they cannot yet read these setups, says the level of precision shown takes roughly five to ten years, argues that watching videos is not the same as learning to execute — his comparison is watching basketball and expecting to dunk — and states that personal responsibility and self-control are the central requirements, and the only subject on which he will speak in absolutes (22:20, 23:10, 23:25, 24:00, 24:13, 24:52). The tone through the middle of the video is combative in places, including remarks aimed at viewers who question the record.

He closes by saying where he would have exited if he had been able to stay with the trade — the level discussed the previous day — notes that he was ultimately stopped on the final portion, and says he may post a premarket analysis for Thursday or Friday if his schedule allows, otherwise a teaching lecture, before signing off (25:53, 25:58, 26:51, 27:23).

What the recording establishes, and what it does not

Established by the source: the two conditional paths he says he gave before the 8:30 release, his preference for the lower route, the New Week Opening Gap midpoint as the level that would have invalidated the bearish read, the plan to sell within the lower portion of the gap, the incremental management he describes, and his own statement that the initial direction of an inflation release cannot be predicted and that he has been wrong more often than right on it.

Not established: any fill, partial, size, stop or net result, because none exists in an audio transcript without account proof; the claim that buy stops above short-term highs were absorbed by larger sellers; the exact price levels he reads from the chart, several of which the automated transcript renders inconsistently; and anything about the prior Monday and Tuesday videos whose levels this recording assumes the viewer already has.

Official sources for the PPI release and its timing

Three pages on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics site were read on 2026-09-14 for this review: the PPI program home page, the release calendar, and a published news release. None of them reports a market reaction, an NQ price or anything about the recording, and none endorses any setup.

What the PPI measures, in the agency’s own words

The program’s home page states that “The Producer Price Index (PPI) program measures the average change over time in the selling prices received by domestic producers for their output,” and notes that the prices come from the first commercial transaction for many products and some services.^[2] That is the statistic the video is trading around; it says nothing about how a release will move a futures market.

The 8:30 a.m. ET publication time is set in advance

The BLS release calendar lists a PPI publication on July 15, 2026 at 8:30 a.m. ET, and the next scheduled releases also carry that time.^[3] A published release confirms the convention: its header reads “embargoed until 8:30 a.m. (ET)”.^[4] Treating the clock as a fixed input and the market’s reaction as unknown is the whole reason a pre-written set of conditions is useful — and it is also why the release time should be read from the calendar rather than inferred from a video.

Sources

BestProps is not affiliated with The Inner Circle Trader, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics or YouTube, and no source listed here endorses this article, this site or any setup. Terms such as New Week Opening Gap, consequent encroachment, Judas swing, fair value gap, suspension block, octant, inefficiency and draw on liquidity are used on this page only as they appear in the recording. Nothing here demonstrates a tested, repeatable or profitable result; the trading described is the speaker’s own account, and no claim is made that a news release can be predicted or that any setup was verified on a live account.

This material is educational and general in nature. Futures trading involves substantial risk, and commentary, chart concepts or reported trades do not guarantee results. It is not individualized financial advice.

Research and disclosure

Research basis: Document-based research. Sources checked: September 14, 2026. Freshness: Current for the recorded review window.

Scope: Document-based review of the primary material cited on this page for an ICT news-session commentary: the page's own mapped first-party upload (Post PPI NQ Futures Commentary Weekly Analysis Delivered – 07/15/2026, The Inner Circle Trader, video LBrsLPKXZ2E, whose title, channel, 2026-07-15 upload timestamp and 27:27 runtime were re-read on the YouTube watch page for this record), the recording's auto-generated captions behind the article's quoted and timestamped passages, and three U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics pages covering the scheduled Producer Price Index release the recording is built around: the PPI program home page for what the index measures, the PPI release schedule that lists the 8:30 a.m. ET publication on 15 July 2026, and the published PPI news release whose header carries the same embargo time. The sources support the article's framing only: that the mapped upload exists, is public and not unlisted, is credited to that channel on that date and runs 27:27; that the BLS release calendar lists the PPI release for 15 July 2026 at 08:30 AM and that the other releases on the same page carry the same time; that the program page defines the index as measuring the average change in selling prices received by domestic producers, drawn from the first commercial transaction for many products and some services; and that a published release is embargoed until 8:30 a.m. ET. They do not verify ICT's chart readings, the parameters he says he gave, the levels he names, his execution or the week's result; they do not establish whether a scheduled release can be predicted or how a futures market will react to it; and they establish no performance.

Direct sources: Post PPI NQ Futures Commentary Weekly Analysis Delivered – 07/15/2026 (The Inner Circle Trader watch page, uploaded 2026-07-15, runtime 27:27); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Producer Price Index program home (defines the PPI and its first-commercial-transaction basis); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Schedule of Releases for the Producer Price Index (lists the PPI release on Jul. 15, 2026 at 08:30 AM); U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Producer Price Index news release summary (header states the release is embargoed until 8:30 a.m. ET)

Material limitations: This is document-based research, not first-hand watching, transcribing or timing of the recording, and the video was not re-watched for this record. The article's descriptions come from the recording's auto-generated captions, which were not checked against the audio. The captions cannot verify the chart ICT displays, the New Week Opening Gap or its midpoint, the levels he reads off the chart, the contract counts he gives in shorthand, the fills, partials and stops he narrates, or whether the week actually resolved as he describes; those remain his own readings and his own account, and the recording carries no order tickets, fills, position sizes, account statements or chart screenshots. The three Bureau of Labor Statistics pages describe the statistic and the scheduled publication clock; they say nothing about how a release moves a futures market, and the release schedule is a forward-looking calendar that can be revised. The recording contains claims the speaker makes about his own record; this page repeats them only as attributed statements and does not verify them. Embed availability and YouTube metadata can change after the checked date. The page asserts no win rate, no backtest, no drawdown figure, no funded-account result and no prop-firm terms, and no firm's current rules are quoted here. This is general educational information rather than individualized financial advice, so readers must verify any definition, session time or platform behaviour themselves, and can use the editorial methodology and correction paths to report an issue. This page does not report first-hand account purchase, trading, support, identity-check, or payout testing.

Commercial state: No active affiliate or sponsor relationship recorded as of July 31, 2026. This record does not describe other commercial relationships.

Read the editorial methodology or report a correction.

ICT Post-PPI NQ Futures Commentary Weekly Analysis July 15 2026