Why your obvious stop loss keeps getting hit

[Shadow Trader]

You place a stop just below the last swing low because that feels logical. So does everyone else. The result is a cluster of orders at the same spot, and price often visits that exact area before moving in your direction. It is not personal and it is not always manipulation. It is simply where liquidity exists. The practical fix is to stop thinking of the swing low as a safe place and to ask what level, if broken, actually invalidates your idea. Often that is further away than the obvious point, or it is the extreme of the sweep zone itself. A wider stop with a smaller position size usually survives better than a tight stop with a larger position. I also avoid round numbers and previous session extremes for stops. Putting the stop a modest buffer beyond them, based on average spread and typical wick size on the pair, reduces premature exits. You may get stopped less often and still keep the same risk per trade.

[FXS HongKong Scalper]

The point about asking what actually invalidates the idea is the key. For me that is usually the extreme of the sweep, not the swing low itself, and it typically means a stop roughly one and a half times wider than the obvious one. Cutting size to match keeps the money risk the same, and the number of stop outs dropped noticeably once I made that switch. The one downside is fewer trades meet a sensible reward to risk with the wider stop.