Anatomy of a sweep

Liquidity & Stop Hunts

Three parts, every time

A sweep has three ingredients. First, a clear level. Second, a wick that pierces through it. Third, an immediate reversal with no follow-through beyond. Miss any one and it's not a sweep. It's something else.

The wick is the whole point

New traders see a long wick as failure, price tried and got rejected. Read it backwards: that wick succeeded at its actual job, which was triggering every stop resting at that price before reversing.

Speed separates a sweep from a slow grind

A real sweep reverses within the same candle or the next one or two, fast. A slow, multi-candle grind above a level that eventually fails looks similar on paper but behaves completely differently.