Candle Range Theory · three-candle trigger · New York AM · long or short
Three-Candle CRT
One candle marks the extreme. The next has to sweep it and close back inside.
The third only matters if it breaks that sweep candle — and when it does, the target goes on
first, with the stop dragged to force exactly 1.5R, every single trade.
3candles to the trigger
4filters
1.5Rfixed reward:risk, every trade
6 / 6
Watch one CRT long, start to finish
1
Set the bias on a higher timeframe first
Before looking for a single CRT trigger, mark the most extreme recent swing high or low on a higher timeframe and wait for price to sweep that level and reverse away from it.
Only once that higher-timeframe sweep-and-reversal has actually confirmed does a direction become tradeable — CRTs are taken with that bias, never against it.
A three-candle trigger without a confirmed higher-timeframe direction is just a pattern — the bias is what turns it into a trade.
2
Candle 1 marks the extreme — and nothing else
On the 1-hour, 30-minute, or 15-minute chart only, let one candle close and mark its high and low. That range is a reference level, not a signal to act on by itself.
The 1-minute chart never builds this candle — it has no role in forming the setup, only in timing an entry once the setup already exists.
Skip this step and there's no fixed range for candle 2 to sweep — the whole sequence loses its reference point.
3
Candle 2 is the sweep, not a breakout
The next candle has to wick beyond one side of candle 1's range — below the low for a long setup, above the high for a short — and then close back inside that range.
If it closes beyond the range instead of snapping back inside it, the setup is void. That's a breakout in the wrong structure, not a sweep.
The wick-and-close-back-in is what shows liquidity being taken and rejected. A candle that just closes through the level is trend continuation, not a CRT.
4
Candle 3 is the trigger — and it has a clock on it
Enter only when price breaks candle 2's high (long) or candle 2's low (short). Nothing before that break is a valid entry, no matter how convincing the sweep looked.
If candle 3 closes without breaking that level, the setup is dead. A fourth or later candle breaking the same level afterward is considered too low-quality to take.
Without the clock, "wait for the break" quietly turns into "wait indefinitely" — and a stale level breaking three or four candles later isn't the same trade anymore.
5
Choose the entry style before candle 3 forms
Direct break: enter the instant candle 3 crosses candle 2's level. More trades trigger, at a lower win rate.
Rebreak: wait for the initial break, a pullback, and a second break before entering — timed on the 1-minute chart. Fewer trades trigger, at a higher win rate.
Both are the same setup with a different entry filter layered on top — the choice is a trade-frequency decision, not a separate strategy.
6
Target first, then drag the stop to exactly 1.5R
The take-profit goes on first, at the opposing extreme — the higher-timeframe swing level the bias in step one was measured against.
The stop-loss is not a fixed point distance. It's dragged to whatever distance makes the trade exactly 1.5 times reward-to-risk, recalculated on every single trade.
Fix the stop first instead, and reward-to-risk becomes whatever the market happens to give you — the entire point of this setup is that it never is.
The three candles, on one chart
Candle 1 marks the extreme, candle 2 sweeps it and closes back inside, candle 3 breaks candle 2's high to trigger the long — target at the opposing extreme, stop dragged to exactly 1.5R.
Direct break vs. rebreak
Same trigger level, two different entries — take the break the instant it happens, or wait for it to fail once and come back for a second, higher-conviction break.
New York AM is the focus of this page
The three-candle trigger was described across three sessions in the source material — this page is built around the one it works best in.
New York AM · 9:30–12:00 ET
The session this page is built around. The highest-quality window for the trigger — real volume, real participants, real follow-through once candle 3 breaks.
Asian session · 8–10pm ET
Traded as a secondary window with the same three-candle mechanic in the source material — not the focus of this page.
London session
Described as the lowest-quality of the three sessions for this specific setup. Skip it for live trading; it's not covered further here.
The four filters
The three candles don't change — these are what keep you from forcing the trigger onto a chart, a day, or a timeframe it was never built for.
1 Building the setup on a 1-minute chart
The three candles only form on the 1-hour, 30-minute, or 15-minute chart. The 1-minute has exactly two jobs: timing a rebreak entry, and reading whether the tape is too choppy to trade.
Kills: a "setup" that was never actually built on a timeframe this trigger works on.
2 No higher-timeframe bias confirmed
Taking a CRT trigger before the higher-timeframe extreme has actually been swept and reversed — trading the pattern without the direction it depends on.
Kills: a mechanically correct trigger fighting the wrong side of the higher-timeframe move.
3 Low-volume, no-catalyst days
Especially Mondays — thin participation makes a sweep-and-reject mean far less, since there's no real liquidity being taken in the first place.
Kills: a technically valid sweep that has no real order flow behind it.
4 Choppy price action
Alternating massive-body and massive-wick candles with no follow-through between them — the market not settling into a real directional read.
Kills: a break that has nowhere to go because the tape has no follow-through left in it.
Target first, stop dragged to fit — not the other way around
The figures below are clean, illustrative numbers on MNQ (Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100 futures) to show the sequence, not a specific trade called out in the source material.
Target — opposing extreme, set first45.00 pts
Stop — dragged to force exactly 1.5R (45 ÷ 1.5)30.00 pts
Position size — kept under a $500 risk cap8 MNQ
Total risk on the trade$480.00
The mistake this prevents
Setting the stop first — off a fixed number of points, or wherever feels comfortable — and only then seeing what reward-to-risk that happens to produce.
On a setup built around exactly 1.5R, a stop-first process turns disciplined math into a guess that drifts trade to trade.
Set the target at the opposing extreme first. Let the ratio — not a feeling — decide exactly where the stop sits.
Which futures actually fit this setup
Instrument fit as described in the source material — not a specific numeric worked trade, since none was given for a real ticker on a real date.
NQ / MNQNasdaq-100 futures
ES / MESS&P 500 futures
MGCGold futures
Role in the source material
The primary instrument — most of the setup's chart examples were built on it.
Traded alongside NQ as a second index-futures option.
Kept in rotation, but singled out as the weakest fit for this specific setup.
Timeframes
Same rule across all three: 1-hour, 30-minute, or 15-minute to build the three candles; the 1-minute only for a rebreak entry or reading chop.
Described performance
Called out as producing the best results of the three.
Not singled out individually — grouped with NQ as an index-futures instrument.
Called out as producing comparatively poor results.
Takeaway
Default choice for this setup.
A reasonable index-futures alternative to NQ.
Keep it on watch, but don't expect NQ-level performance from it.
Example: one CRT long, 1-minute bars
An example session run through the indicator's own rules. Yesterday swept the 1-hour swing low and closed back above it,
so the 1-hour bias is bullish. Candle 1 is the 9:30 15-minute candle (100.05–100.55). Candle 2, from 9:45, wicks under its low to 99.92
and closes back inside. Candle 3 breaks candle 2's high of 100.36 at 10:01, closes back under it, and breaks it again at 10:04 for the rebreak
entry at 100.36. The target is candle 1's high at 100.55, the stop is dragged to 100.23 for exactly 1.5R, and the target is hit at 10:16.
The bars are made up to show the setup clearly. They aren't a real ticker.
Loading chart…
1-minute
Watch the video
Mark the extreme, wait for the sweep, then trade the break at 1.5R.
Add this to a TradingView chart to build the three CRT candles and mark the New York
window this page describes. It draws and alerts on the setup — it does not place trades.
CRT NY — 3-Candle Model
alerts
Builds the three CRT candles from the 15-minute, 30-minute, and 1-hour charts, reads the
higher-timeframe bias off a key-level sweep, and fires direct-break or rebreak entries inside the New York
window — with a live dashboard, TP/SL lines dragged to an exact 1.5R, and webhook-ready alerts at every
stage (armed, first break, entry, exit, bias flip).
The setup is the same three candles every time, and the risk is the same exact ratio every time —
there's no discretion left to second-guess once the trigger actually prints.
New York AM only, built on the 1-hour, 30-minute, or 15-minute chart — never build the three candles on a 1-minute chart.
Bias, then sweep, then break, in that order — skip the days with no real participation and the tape that won't settle.
Target first, stop dragged to force exactly 1.5R — never the other way around.
Model built around a three-candle Candle Range Theory (CRT) setup — mark the extreme, wait for the sweep-and-close-back-in, then trade only the break, sized to an exact 1.5 reward-to-risk ratio — as taught in a trading-education video, focused on the New York AM session. The risk figures above are clean, illustrative numbers on MNQ and are not from a specific trade named in that video. Watch the reference video →