Fair Value Gaps

Explore Fair Value Gaps (FVG) and their application in Smart Money Concepts (SMC) trading. Learn to identify and leverage these market inefficiencies.

Published · Updated · Methodology: SMC

Part of: Fair Value Gap (FVG)

  • Methodology: SMC
  • Content type: educational

Indicators used

  • Fair Value Gap (FVG)

Source video

Decoded from: I Found A Secret To Fair Value Gaps by TradingLab — watch the original

Strategy overview

A fair value gap is the imbalance left on the chart when price moves so quickly in one direction that a candle's range is never overlapped by its neighbours, leaving an unfilled pocket that traders watch for a later revisit. The practical problem with the concept is not understanding it but counting it: once you know what an FVG looks like, you see dozens of them on every chart and every timeframe, and most of them go nowhere. That gap between recognition and selection is the space this video positions itself in.

"I Found A Secret To Fair Value Gaps" comes from TradingLab, an English-language channel that packages smart money concepts for a broad retail audience rather than for an ICT-native one. The title follows the channel's discovery convention — a claimed find rather than a curriculum — and the shape of the video follows from it: it is built around one asserted distinction that is supposed to separate the gaps worth acting on from the ones worth ignoring, not around a survey of the concept. That makes it a refinement video, useful mainly to someone who already draws FVGs and is frustrated by how many of them fail.

This catalogue entry is filed at concept level. It is tagged under SMC with the fair value gap as its single indicator, and no timeframe, session anchor, or parameter set is attached to it — the video is listed here as source material on the concept, not as a rule set. Anyone taking the idea further should treat the claimed refinement as a hypothesis to check against their own instrument and timeframe before it earns a place in a plan.

Topics

fair value gaps · fvg · smc strategy · ict trading · smart money concepts · price action · trading strategy · pine script · tradingview strategy · market inefficiencies · smc fair value gaps

Frequently asked questions

What is a fair value gap (FVG)?

A fair value gap is a price imbalance created when a fast directional move leaves part of a candle's range untraded by the candles either side of it. Traders mark that pocket as a reference area, on the reasoning that price often returns to it before continuing.

Why do traders say most fair value gaps don't work?

Because FVGs are common. They appear on every timeframe and in every market, including in noise and inside ranges, so the concept on its own produces far more marked areas than actionable ones. Most FVG methods are therefore really selection methods — some combination of context, location, or timeframe used to decide which gaps to ignore.

What is TradingLab's "secret" to fair value gaps?

The video is framed around a single claimed refinement to how FVGs are selected rather than around teaching the concept from scratch. This page catalogues it at concept level — no rule set, parameters, or timeframe have been extracted from it — so the video itself remains the source for what that refinement is.

How should I evaluate an FVG idea before trading it?

Define precisely which gaps qualify and which don't, then check that definition against historical price on the instrument and timeframe you actually trade, so you can see how often the qualifying gaps hold. Strategy Decoder catalogues strategy concepts from video sources so you can identify what a method claims and test it yourself on TradingView.

About this strategy page

This trading strategy was decoded by Strategy Decoder's AI from a public YouTube trading video and turned into a structured, reviewable specification. In the interactive app this page shows the full entry and exit logic, risk management settings, the indicators involved with their parameters, AlgoWizard-compatible logic and a Pine Script export ready for TradingView backtesting — plus an automated backtest verdict when one has been computed for this strategy.

Strategy Decoder catalogs 2,229 decoded strategies. Each one is extracted with confidence scoring, cross-linked to the indicators it uses, and kept up to date as new videos are processed daily. Load this page with JavaScript enabled to use the interactive tools, or start from the strategy explorer to filter by methodology, market and timeframe.

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