liquidity sweeps: real mechanism or hindsight story?

[Shadow Trader]

Believers say it works like this. Price runs above an obvious high, triggers the stops sitting there, then reverses. That's a sweep, and the trade is to fade it once the rejection prints. Critics say hold on.

The critics' case. First, hindsight. Any wick past a prior high that comes back is a sweep after the fact. Before the fact, the same wick is called a breakout, and plenty of them keep going. Second, the story can't lose: if price reverses it was a sweep, and if it continues the liquidity just hadn't been taken yet. Third, scale. Marked "obvious highs" on a 1-minute chart are everywhere, so something always gets swept.

The believers' case: stops really do cluster at obvious levels, that's just how orders get placed, and thin books around those levels do produce quick spikes and snaps. A fast spike and rejection happens a lot, and it's tradeable if defined precisely.

The sensible middle is a testable definition. What counts as the level, how far beyond it, how fast the rejection, what confirms it. Without that, the label explains the past and says nothing about the next trade.

Which camp are you in, and if you trade sweeps, how exactly do you define one so it can be counted in a journal?