Stop-loss hunting explained
Price moves your way, the level looks sound, and then it trades just far enough through to take the stop. A moment later it is back on the original side of the level, going where the trade had expected.
Did somebody deliberately take your stop, or did price simply trade through a level where many traders might have placed their protection? The timing makes both questions feel reasonable. A candle chart cannot establish either one. It can show that price went beyond a level other traders could also see, and what it did afterwards. “Stop-loss hunting” is the name traders give that episode. The name describes the feeling. The chart supports a narrower account.
What a stop-loss order does
A stop-loss is an instruction to get out of a position if price reaches a level the trader has chosen in advance. It rests until that price is traded. What happens then depends on the order type, the broker and the market. A stop-market order generally becomes a market order when it is triggered, and looks for a fill at the prices then available. A stop-limit order behaves differently: it becomes a limit order, and it may remain unfilled if price runs through the limit.
Used to protect a long, it is a sell stop below the market. Used to protect a short, it is a buy stop above the market. Once a sell stop is triggered and executed, it sells. Once a buy stop is triggered and executed, it buys. If several marketable stops are triggered together, they become a burst of orders on that side of the market. They can push price further in the direction of the break, because they are demanding a fill rather than waiting for one. Stops that remain unfilled do not.
A stop is not the only order that can sit beyond a high or a low. Traders also place buy stops above a high, and sell stops below a low, to enter on a break rather than to exit. Limit orders are different again: they rest at a price and provide the other side of a trade, instead of chasing through it. When price runs an obvious level, protective stops, entry stops and ordinary market orders can all be involved. The chart does not separate them, and it does not show any individual trader’s stop.
Why stops gather at obvious places
Traders put protection where a level, if it fails, would make the idea look wrong. The places they agree on are easy to list: the low of a range, the high, the edge of a session, a prior swing, a round number. The stop is then placed a small distance beyond that price, so that a minor poke does not touch it.
That habit is understandable, and it is public in the sense that anyone who has been taught the same habit can guess it. It is not public on the chart. No candle prints the stops resting above the high. What repeats is the location traders choose, not a displayed queue of orders.
A range makes the pattern plain. While price holds inside it, longs often protect just under the low and shorts just over the high. Both sides can be right about where the other side is likely to have placed protection, and both can be wrong about whether those orders are actually there in size. The cluster is an inference from a common practice. It is not an order-book reading.
What a push through the level can involve
Suppose the range low gives way. If sell stops are resting there and are executed, triggering them turns them into selling. That selling can extend the push, because it arrives as the price is already falling. Breakout sellers can be selling at the same time. Buyers who had been willing to bid at the low may step aside. Any of those can be part of the same candle. None of them is identified by it.
Stops can contribute to the movement. They are not required to explain it, and they are not the whole of it. A push through a low can happen with very few stops behind it. A large cluster can be triggered and still be met by enough buying that price barely travels. The useful limit is this: triggered stops, when they are filled, are one way a break can find extra orders in its own direction. They are not proof of who placed them, or of why price went there.
When the push comes back
Continue the same range. Price trades under the low, perhaps with a wide candle, and then returns inside. The next candles do not build below the level. The low has been crossed and has not been held.
What you can see is the sequence: a push, a failure to stay, and a return. If sell stops were triggered on the way through, their selling did not produce a market that remained lower. Something else was willing to buy those prices, or the selling ran out. You do not need a named institution to describe that. You also cannot rule one out. The chart does not settle the question of intent.
This is the episode traders call a stop hunt. The name imports a hunter. The observation does not. An attempt was made beyond a visible level, and price did not remain there. Liquidity grabs and breakouts is about that distinction: the push is the attempt, and rejection or acceptance is what you watch afterwards. A failed break is information about the attempt. It is not yet a trade in the other direction, and it is not evidence that the push was arranged so that particular stops would pay for it.
When the push keeps going
Use the same low and a different continuation. Price trades through, pauses below it, and the rally does not reclaim the range. Later candles hold on the new side, or leave the old low behind.
The stops under the low may have been triggered. So may the sell orders of traders who were waiting for the break. The continuation does not tell you the proportion. It tells you that prices beyond the level were accepted, at least for this swing. Calling it a stop hunt because stops might have been there describes the start of the push and ignores the part that followed. A break that holds is a different observation from a break that is given back.
Both can begin with the same kind of candle. A sequence of reversals does not make the next push a hunt. A sequence of continuations does not make the next one safe to chase. Each push is judged by whether price remains beyond the level.
The word, and the Manipulation phase
“Hunting” is a story about motive. It says the move was conducted in order to reach the stops. Some moves may be. A candle is not how you would know. The same spike fits a trader hitting a bid in size, a batch of ordinary stops, a thin moment in the session, or someone who did mean to run the obvious level. Those are different causes with one visible result.
In the Market Maker Method, Manipulation is the name for a push through a visible level that fails to stay there. It is a reading of that behaviour, placed beside Accumulation and Distribution, which is also called Profit Release. The label is an interpretation. It is not a finding that someone engineered the candle, and it is not a claim that every stop-out was arranged. If later price stops agreeing with the reading, the reading gives way.
The method’s question is the one the chart can keep answering. Is this push being rejected, or is price establishing itself beyond the level? That question stays open longer than the breakout candle, and it can be revised when the swing after it changes the picture. Acceptance and rejection are developing observations. They are not a count of closes, and they are not a signal to buy or sell.
A marked candle raises a neighbouring version of the same issue. Traders who treat an old down candle as an order block often place protection just beyond it, or expect a return to defend it. Order blocks explained is about what that mark records and what it assumes is still there. The stop, if it exists, is still not printed on the chart. The return is.
A spring below a range, or an upthrust above it, can look like the failed break described here. Wyckoff and the Market Maker Method is where those names are separated.
On the chart
None of this needs an indicator. A candle chart is enough to notice an obvious high or low, to watch a push through it, and to see whether that push is rejected or accepted.
PAT for TradingView is one way to keep the Market Maker Method in view while the push is still unresolved. A Pressure Point marks a meaningful change in behaviour. What matters is what price does afterwards. A Ray Line is a reference for which side is holding and which side is not. Purple Dots draw attention to a moment worth watching. How those readings sit on a candle is set out in How PAT reads the market.