Within the ICT trading methodology, Order Blocks represent one of the clearest footprints of institutional activity. They are not indicators, patterns, or retail concepts — they are zones where large market participants executed positions. The beauty of Order Blocks is that they can be areas where large portions of limit orders rest and where the price is likely to return to and reverse from.
There are a lot of variations floating around about how to identify and draw Order Blocks. This can lead to confusion as it’s unclear which method to hold on to for the best results. You will probably also notice how different educators teach different versions of Order Blocks and apply those versions randomly in their trading.
This is why automating a simple, straightforward Order Blocks concept is the key to consistently applying this ICT component to your trading.
Since we focus on building automated trading systems for MetaTrader 5, we will refer to these systems as Expert Advisors (EAs)
An Order Block is the last opposing candle before an impulsive move that leads to a market structure shift or displacement. There is often some uncertainty about what exactly a displacement is, but we’ve established a clear rule to make this completely mechanical. From an ICT perspective, this last opposing candle represents institutional order flow entering the market.
In the case of a Bullish Order Block, it means that we are looking to identify the last Bearish candle before a bullish impulsive move happens.
Order Blocks are significant because they often act as:
These characteristics make Order Blocks objective zones of interest rather than subjective trade entries. However, on lower timeframes, when stacked with other confluences, Order Blocks can be used to place trade orders directly.
Find an example where we used Order Blocks in a complete automated trading strategy here
How do we define an impulsive move?
To automate the Order Block, you need mechanical rules for all of the elements. To identify a Bullish Impulsive move, we implemented the following rules in our EA:
The screenshot above shows the candle ID numbers to help you understand better what these rules actually look like.
Institutions cannot enter large positions with a single click. They require liquidity, time, and efficiency. Order Blocks can reflect those areas where institutions have tried to fill a large number of orders. The logic is that not all of their orders have been fulfilled, and the market has started to catch up with their activities, moving the price away from these areas.
When prices revisit these areas, the market often reacts — not by coincidence, but because unfilled or defended orders remain. You can use an OB as a strong reversal area.
With Profectus, traders can transform the Order Blocks concept into a fully automated module without writing code.
Using Profectus, you can:
This no-code trading approach allows traders to experiment, refine, and deploy institutional concepts in minutes.
I named the blocks to make it easier for you to understand what we’re doing in each Profectus block. We can divide the creation of this no-code EA for OBs into 3 steps.
And that’s it! It only takes a few minutes to drag-and-drop the blocks and build the Order Block module in Profectus. You can now add an execution module to start taking trades, or add more rules to refine the OB, or add more confluences to the strategy.
Once automated, the Order Block strategy can be deployed as:
Why MT5?
This allows you to move from manual chart analysis to mechanical automated trading.
Yes. In our blog library, you can find a selection of automated ICT concepts and strategies
If a strategy has:
It can be automated.
Order Blocks are just one example of how institutional trading concepts translate perfectly into algorithmic systems.
Want to see how this Order Block strategy works when fully automated?
Access an enhanced automation template used to turn this ICT concept into a deployable MQ5 trading bot inside Profectus. This template has a trade execution module included, so you can start testing it right away!
Disclaimer: Templates are for educational purposes only!
👉 Get the Order Block Automation Template → ICT OB Profectus template
Watch the YouTube video here: https://youtu.be/75u7ccVHZt8?si=6CNJcD-7QOxvcATG
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