Market Maker Models
The Market Maker Model (AMD): how institutions accumulate, manipulate, and distribute in repeating cycles. Learn to read and trade each phase.
Reading Each Phase on the Chart
The Market Maker Model runs in a repeating Accumulation → Manipulation → Distribution cycle, and each phase leaves a recognizable footprint. Accumulation looks like a quiet range, often with springs at the lows. Manipulation is the sharp, fast move that sweeps the obvious liquidity in the wrong direction — it feels like the start of a trend but reverses almost immediately. Distribution is the real, sustained move that follows, delivering price to the engineered target.
The Judas Swing and Session Timing
The manipulation leg is so reliable around session opens that it has a name: the Judas swing. Near the London and New York opens, price frequently makes a deceptive first move to grab liquidity before the genuine move of the session begins. If you map the prior session's highs and lows and watch the open, you will repeatedly see price reach for that liquidity, sweep it, and reverse. Trading the first move is how retail gets trapped; waiting for it to complete is the edge.
Trade With the Model, Not Against It
The practical sequence is simple: let manipulation finish, confirm the liquidity sweep, wait for a change of character, and then enter in the distribution direction from the resulting point of interest. The model is also fractal — the same AMD cycle plays out on the weekly and on the 5-minute — so align your execution timeframe inside the higher-timeframe phase rather than fighting it.