Stop Hunt / Liquidity Grab

A stop hunt (or liquidity grab) is a fast, often sharp price move that slightly clears an obvious high or low, triggering the stops sitting just beyond it, before immediately reversing the other way.

Visually, this often shows up as a long wick that pokes past a key level without the candle body closing beyond it — a sign the move wasn’t backed by real directional intent.

For an ICT trader, a stop hunt isn’t something to be caught out by, it’s something to trade off: it’s often the trigger that precedes an entry, once liquidity has been "swept" and a value zone (order block, FVG) is mitigated on the way back.

How do you recognise one live rather than in hindsight? Three things must coincide. An obvious level that everyone can see. A fast overshoot, often in one or two candles, with a wick clearly longer than the body. And above all an immediate return back under the level: if price stays beyond it for several candles, that was not a stop hunt but a genuine break.

Confusing it with a BOS is the central difficulty, and it comes down to a single criterion: the close. A wick that pokes through then retracts is a stop hunt. A candle that closes decisively beyond and holds is a BOS. Until the candle has closed you cannot tell — which is precisely why entering mid-candle is so expensive.

How to trade it? The stop hunt is not the entry, it is the green light. The typical sequence: price sweeps an obvious low, comes back above it, and you then look for a long entry at the first value zone left behind by that reversal — an order block or fair value gap formed on the way back up. The stop goes under the sweep wick, which often gives very small risk for a wide target.

The classic mistake: placing stops where everyone else places them. Just under a round low, just above yesterday’s high. Those spots are not shelter, they are targets. Move your stop beyond the plausible sweep zone, reducing position size if needed to keep the same risk in francs.

Second trap: seeing stop hunts everywhere. In a range, price crosses its boundaries constantly without it meaning anything. A stop hunt only carries weight if it takes genuinely significant liquidity and fits a directional bias established on a higher timeframe.