What it is
A liquidity sweep, also called a stop run, a liquidity grab or a spring, is a move that pushes just beyond an obvious high or low, triggers the orders resting there, and then reverses back inside the prior range. The premise is that clusters of stop orders and breakout orders sit above equal highs and below equal lows, and that those resting orders are the liquidity a large participant needs in order to get filled.
How it works
The recognisable signature is a cluster of roughly equal highs or lows, a fast excursion through them — often a single bar with a long wick and a volume spike — and, critically, a quick reclaim of the level. The reclaim is the part that turns a breakout into a sweep. Without it, the move is simply a breakout that is working.
How traders use it
The trade is a fade: enter on the reclaim, place the stop beyond the extreme of the sweep, and target the opposite side of the range or the next pool of resting orders. It has an appealing risk profile because the invalidation point is a specific recent extreme rather than an arbitrary distance chosen for convenience.
Where it breaks down
In real time a sweep and a genuine breakout look identical until the reclaim happens, so any rule has to define how long a reclaim may take and what invalidates the idea. The surrounding language is worth discounting too: saying that someone hunted stops assigns deliberate intent to what is usually the ordinary mechanics of a breakout attracting orders and then failing for lack of follow-through. The pattern is useful; the narrative is optional.
Educational reference. This entry describes how a concept is defined and used. It is not investment advice, not a recommendation, and not a signal. Any rule you build from it should be tested with realistic costs before it is traded, and no historical result guarantees a future one.