Liquidity · Beginner · 3 min read
Liquidity sweeps: why price pokes through highs and lows
Stops pile up beyond swing highs and lows. A sweep takes them with a wick and closes back inside.
Where do traders put their stops? Just beyond the obvious swing high or low. SMC calls that pile of resting orders liquidity, and says big players need it: to buy a lot, you need many sellers, and triggered stops are sellers.
A sweep is a candle whose wick goes beyond the level, triggers those stops, and then closes back inside.
- 80 real 1h candles of BTC/USDT · Crypto (perpetual futures) · 2026-07-01 → 2026-07-04. The code found this example, not us: it is the most recent one in our data.
- A swing high at 61 710. Many traders put their stop just above it, so a pile of orders (liquidity) waits there.
- This candle's wick goes above the level (stops triggered), then it closes back below it. That is the sweep.
- The SMC idea: big players needed those orders to fill, so after the sweep price should go the other way (down).
- What happened next: 10 candles later, price was +0.4 % from the close of the marked candle. One example proves nothing; the test below counts thousands.
Flip the cards
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Quick check
A candle trades below the last swing low and closes below it. Is it a sweep?
One example on a chart is not evidence. The box below is: it counts every trade our code took on years of data.
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Education about how markets and tests work. Not financial advice.