This is LITERALLY the reason why the market moves the way it does.
If you dont know what and where liquidity is, you are the liquidity.
Read till the end of this thread to learn how to avoid getting stop hunted and instead trade like Smart Money
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First, You Must Understand What Liquidity Is…
Simply put, liquidity is created by all the buy and sell orders in the market.
Every single market participant places orders, and together, creates liquidity.
For any trade to happen, there must be a buyer for every seller, and a seller for every buyer.
Not All Markets Have Good Liquidity
Markets that are smooth, with lots of traders and clear price action typically means that it has high liquidity. An example of this is major Forex pairs like EUR/USD and stock indices like ES & NQ.
Opposite to this is low liquidity wherein the markets that are choppy, with sudden jumps and gaps because only a few people are trading them. Think of exotic Forex pairs like USD/MXN or tiny penny stocks.
You want to focus on high liquidity markets because this avoids massive spreads, manipulation, and slippage. Simply put: BAD PRICE ACTION.
Liquidity Pools, Where Liquidity Gathers.
While liquidity is everywhere, it forms “pools” in specific areas. These liquidity pools are were a LARGE number of buy and sell orders are clustered.
They are most often found around swing highs and swing lows.
- A swing high is a candle with a candle lower to either side
- A swing low is a candle with a candle higher to either side
Both create a sharp point in price action.
If you put a baby in front of a chart they would likely point here.
Buyside & Sellside Liquidities
Knowing where retail traders place their orders is the key.
Buyside Liquidities (BSL) sits above swing highs. This is where traders typically place their buy stops leading to the creation of a cluster of buy stops.
Sellside Liquidities (SSL) sits below swing lows. Opposite to BSL, this is where typically traders place their sell stops which leads to the creation of a cluster of sell stops.
Smart Money Needs Liquidity
Big institutions can’t just buy or sell anywhere. Their huge orders need enough opposite orders to be filled.
When Smart Money is bullish, they will often seek to BUY below an old swing low.
Why? To trigger all the sell stops waiting there, allowing them to accumulate huge buy positions. Opposite is true when they are bearish.
Smart Money Needs Liquidity Part 2
After accumulating their positions, Smart Money needs to offload them for profit.
If smart money bought below lows, they will target buyside liquidity above old highs. They sell their positions into the buy orders waiting there. And of course, opposite is true if smart money sold above highs.
This is the basis of pivot context.
We need to capitalize on the fact that Smart Money needs to pair their orders with opposite liquidities.
Stop Hunts and How To Trade Them
The entire process of Smart Money pushing price into liquidity to fill their orders is called a stop hunt.
It’s why price often “sweeps” a high or low before reversing.
To confirm this, we need to look for an impulse shift on the lower timeframe. This is the displacement that shows strong institutional activity on that level.
This impulse shift is where we can enter and target the HTF opposing draw on liquidity.
I’ve done a deep dive on this topic recently and if you wanna learn more, watch this video:
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Simply put its a three candle pattern where the middle candle has an area where the wicks of the candles before and after it do not overlap.
This leaves behind a visible gap, a sign that one side of the market, either buyers or sellers, pushed price quickly and aggressively, leaving behind an imbalance.
The Market Is All About Efficiency
FVGs create an inefficiency in the market…
There are two types of FVGs:
1. Buyside Imbalance Sellside Inefficiency (BISI) - there’s an imbalance on the buyside because price is moving higher, leaving price inefficient in sellside. 2. Sellside Imbalance Buyside Inefficiency (SIBI) - there’s an imbalance on the sellside because price is moving lower, leaving price inefficient in buyside.
Don’t be confused. Remember that FVGs = Imbalances = Inefficiencies.
If you're not following this process, you’re entering the trading week blind
It is literally what I implement every week to get the high-probability trades that I’m taking.
Finish this thread and you’ll master the simple weekly trading process.
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The economic news calendar is your roadmap.
It shows you what day during the week will likely provide volatility to trade with.
You see, news is what injects volatility into the market. Volatility = energy
Price is highest probability to trade when there is ENERGY in the markets.
This is when we see price in a hurry to get to its draws and not chop/consolidate.
We want to be EXTRA cautious on days without red folder news since assets have an increased chance of consolidating during those days.
We also wanna be cautious the day before NFP, CPI, and FOMC. Price typically likes to be held in a range as it awaits the main volatility injector for the week.
Lack of news = Lack of energy
We want to avoid trading bank holidays as the volatility simply isn’t there.
Below you’ll see the effect of bank holidays to the price action. We had USD bank holiday on Monday and see what the effect of it in major pairs.
So, to be aware of this: Go to forexfactory.com/calendar and ask yourself: “Where are the high impact news events laid out for this week? Which assets are they on? Is there Big 3 news events? Is there a bank holiday?”
Give me 5 minutes and I’ll simplify your understanding of price action…
The only concepts you need to know in order to find bias are orderflow and candlestick logic.
At the end of this thread, you’ll have everything you need to read and trade any asset effectively.
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Orderflow and Candlestick Logic
These two concepts give you both the direction and the confirmation.
In a bullish orderflow leg, once bullish PD arrays are respected, then there’s a higher chance of price going higher.
In a bearish orderflow leg, once bearish PD arrays are respected, then there’s a higher chance of price going lower.
It’s that simple.
Everything you should know about Orderflow
Orderflow gives you the direction and targets through price legs.
Price legs are formed by swing highs/lows and fair value gaps.
Again, on a bullish orderflow, bullish PD arrays are respected and the opposite for bearish orderflow.
TIP: the best orderflow (price) legs comes from previous orderflow legs.
Lastly, I mainly trade once price retraces to the HTF FVG then we target the swing high/low based on the current orderflow. No orderflow (consolidation) = No trade.
An Impulse Shift is a clear footprint left by Smart Money when they flip the market's direction.
By the end of this thread, you’ll know how to spot it!
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𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗻 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝘂𝗹𝘀𝗲 𝗦𝗵𝗶𝗳𝘁?
It's a powerful, V-shaped reversal that occurs at a HTF level (your Context).
You're looking for a V-shaped displacement away from that key level. The Fair Value Gap created during this sharp move is the Impulse Shift.
𝗦𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗳𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝘂𝗹𝘀𝗲 𝗦𝗵𝗶𝗳𝘁
The best case scenario for an impulse shift is when price does this:
1. FVG In: Price creates an FVG into the HTF level, luring traders into the "obvious" trend. 2. FVG Out: Price then displaces sharply away from the level, creating a new FVG and trapping those traders.
Price disrespects the orderflow by making an impulse opposite to the current orderflow. Hence the name, impulse shift.