Picture one candle that pokes below a recent low, gets bought straight back, and closes inside the old range. A Wyckoff student calls it a spring. A reader of a 1995 short-term trading book calls it Turtle Soup. A smart money concepts trader calls it a liquidity sweep, and may draw an order block next to it. Then the three groups argue about who said it first.

This post lines up the names, the dates you can check and the statements people have made in public. It does not decide who "invented" anything, because for most of these ideas no document we could open settles it. It does show what the one clearly dated book says, and what ICT himself has written about credit.

Quick timeline

Date What happened Where it is recorded
1873 to 1934 Richard Wyckoff lives. His method, with springs and upthrusts, codifies how large operators work a market, and he founds a school in the 1930s StockCharts ChartSchool, Wyckoff tutorial
1983 Richard Dennis trains the group later called the Turtles, who buy 20-day breakouts LiteFinance article on Turtle Soup
1995 Street Smarts by Laurence Connors and Linda Bradford Raschke appears, with the Turtle Soup setup (some listings say 1996) Google Books record; Open Library record
29 September 2024 ICT posts a list of terms he calls his own, including his order block theory His X post of that date
2 October 2024 In a reply, ICT credits Raschke and Connors with Turtle Soup and says he trades or teaches neither it nor the Turtle method His X post of that date
25 May 2025 ICT posts that anyone who says he rebranded someone else's concepts should be asked for proof His X post of that date
4 September 2025 and 5 October 2025 A Wyckoff author and a technical analysis research head post their view that smart money ideas trace back to Wyckoff Their X posts, opinions

What is Turtle Soup, and where did it come from?

Turtle Soup is a failed breakout trade. The Turtles, a group trained by Richard Dennis in 1983, bought a new 20-day high and sold a new 20-day low. Raschke and Connors went the other way. They bet that many of those breakouts fail, and they built rules to trade the snap back.

The buy version, as an MQL5 article describes it, waits for price to drop below a 20-day low that is several days old. The entry is a pending order a few points above the broken low. The stop goes just below the new low. The sell side is the mirror image. A second version, Turtle Soup Plus One, waits for the daily bar to close back inside the range before acting.

The name is a pun on the Turtles. Raschke was never one of them, as a profile on TurtleTrader.com states. The book, Street Smarts: High Probability Short-Term Trading Strategies, was published by M. Gordon Publishing Group. Google Books dates it to 1995 and counts 241 pages. Open Library lists 1996, and some bookseller listings do too, so the year depends on which record you trust. We could not find a dated first-print source for ICT's own order block teaching, so we cannot compare dates on that side.

ICT has said the same thing. In a reply on 2 October 2024 he wrote that Raschke and Connors presented Turtle Soup as a way to fade the original Turtle breakout, and added "I trade or teach neither". That is a clear credit, in his own words.

Meanwhile, some broker and education sites file Turtle Soup under ICT setups. One LiteFinance article credits Raschke and Connors with the 1995 book, then describes the ICT version as a liquidity sweep followed by a fair value gap. It presents that as a refinement of the same false-breakout idea. So the label travels with the community, and the credit usually travels with it too.

What did Wyckoff call it?

Wyckoff students use the spring and the upthrust. According to StockCharts ChartSchool, a spring is a brief move below the support of a trading range that closes back inside, late in the range. The page calls it a bear trap. An upthrust is the mirror image above resistance, a bull trap.

The StockCharts page does not say who first named them, and we did not find a source that does. It says Wyckoff lived from 1873 to 1934 and founded a school in the 1930s.

The shapes look alike on a chart. The context differs. A spring belongs to a defined range and a stage of accumulation. Turtle Soup is a rule built on a 20-day window. A liquidity sweep, as one 2026 study defines it, is the first touch of a level where two swing highs or lows sit at about the same price. Different rules can pick out the same candle without being the same idea.

And supply and demand zones, and order blocks?

Supply and demand zone teaching marks an area where price paused, a base, and then left sharply. A page from the Indian analytics firm Strike describes a demand zone as a place where buyers overpowered sellers and a supply zone as the reverse, and it sorts zones into continuation and reversal patterns. The same page does not mention order blocks or name an originator.

In smart money concepts, the nearest name is the order block. The 2026 SSRN study, which turned the idea into a test, defines a bullish one as the last down candle before price closes above a recent swing high. Supply and demand teaching describes a similar area as a base that price left sharply. The two descriptions overlap a lot.

ICT says the idea is his. In a post of 29 September 2024 he listed terms he says belong to his teaching, including "My Order Block Theory". He also said buyside and sellside liquidity are his terms for buy stops and sell stops. He wrote that students of paid courses built on his free material will hear these terms, and he asked them to post what they find. That is his claim about his own work and about other teachers. We could not test it.

Where the argument sits

Three positions are visible in public posts.

  • ICT. He credits Raschke and Connors for Turtle Soup. He calls the order block theory and several terms his own. On 25 May 2025 he wrote that when people say he rebranded someone else's concepts, they should be asked for proof. In a March 2025 post he also advised would-be teachers to credit the people who put them where they are.
  • A Wyckoff author. Rubén Villahermosa, who lists books on Wyckoff in his profile, wrote on X in September 2025 that today's methods with new names all drink from Wyckoff, with changed words and the same core. The post is a short opinion with no side-by-side evidence.
  • A technical analysis research head. Lucas Costa, CMT, who lists himself as head of technical analysis research at the bank BTG Pactual, wrote in October 2025 that the exact origin of smart money concepts is blurry, many attribute it to ICT, and that Wyckoff's "Composite Man" idea of a big operator moving price is an old ancestor. He calls smart money concepts a modern reinterpretation. That is also an opinion.

None of the three shows a document where one person took from another. What the public record shows is overlapping ideas, different labels and strong feelings. We did not find statements from Raschke, Connors or supply and demand teachers about ICT, so their side is missing here.

What the other side says

On the credit question, ICT's side is above, in his own posts. We found no reply from Raschke or Connors to anything in this post. The authors of the two opinion posts have not, as far as we could see, offered documents beyond their short posts. If any party sends a dated source that changes the picture, this post should change too.

What traders can take from it

  • Learn the rule, not the label. "Price takes out the 20-day low by a few points, then closes back above it" is a rule. "Turtle Soup" is a name. Write the rule down in your playbook in plain words and your own numbers.
  • Do not count one trade three times. If you tag the same wick as a spring, a sweep and Turtle Soup, your statistics will inflate. Pick one name per setup and define it once.
  • Test the idea you actually trade. Names overlap, rules differ, and backtesting results belong to one rule only. Count your trades, too. See sample size.
  • Ask for dates when someone says "invented by". A book with a copyright page, or a dated video, is evidence. A confident post is not.
  • Keep your own tags. A journal built from your own broker data lets you compare your "spring" trades with your "sweep" trades and see whether the label makes any difference to your results. How to build a playbook covers the written rules.

Frequently asked questions

Who invented Turtle Soup?

Laurence Connors and Linda Bradford Raschke published the setup in Street Smarts. Google Books dates the book to 1995, and Open Library to 1996. ICT credits the two authors in his own post of 2 October 2024.

Is Turtle Soup the same as a liquidity sweep?

They are close relatives, not twins. Turtle Soup is a rule on a 20-day high or low. A liquidity sweep is a broader idea, price running past a level where orders are assumed to sit and then reversing. A broker article treats the ICT version as a refinement of the same false-breakout idea.

Is a Wyckoff spring the same as a liquidity sweep?

The shape is similar: a brief move beyond range support that closes back inside. The Wyckoff version belongs to a trading range and a stage of accumulation, and it is read with volume and context. Different rules can flag the same candle. Test the exact rule you use.

Who invented order blocks?

We could not find a dated source that settles it. ICT says order block theory is his. Supply and demand teaching describes similar zones, and some commentators trace the broader smart money idea to Wyckoff. These are positions, not proof.

What do critics say about where ICT's ideas come from?

Some critics say the ideas are older ideas with new names, and point to Wyckoff. ICT says anyone who claims he rebranded someone else's work should be asked for proof. The documents that exist are public posts and one book, so the question is open and this post does not answer it.

Sources

This post is based on public sources as of October 30, 2026. Found a mistake? Write to info@setupbook.io.