Stop hunts are not a conspiracy against small traders — they are big players engineering the liquidity they need, and understanding that turns a painful loss into a trade setup.

• Your stop getting hit at the exact low is not personal; nobody can see your individual order.
• The real "hunters" are quant firms and big funds that need huge fills and can only get them where thousands of stops sit clustered.
• Those clusters form under obvious lows and above obvious highs, which is exactly why price keeps stabbing through them and snapping back.
• Every hunt follows the same shape: an obvious level forms, price is pushed into it, stops fire all at once, then price returns.
• Crypto is the worst offender because of 24/7 trading, thin weekend order books, and heavy leverage that turns stop runs into forced liquidation cascades.
• The fix is simple: place stops where the trade idea is actually wrong, not two ticks under the low, and judge a break by candle closes rather than a wick.

Outlook: Expect these sweeps at every obvious level, wait for about three closes beyond a level before believing a breakout, and treat a swept-then-reclaimed low as a buying opportunity rather than a disaster.

## Bitcoin Levels

• **Bias:** Neutral on the mechanics, constructive after a swept low is reclaimed.
• **Buy / accumulate:** The wick lows around $60,132 — the repeated stabs below that February low were all reclaimed, and buying those reclaims was up more than 30%.
• **Support:** $60,132 (the February low that was swept four times without a close below).
• **Invalidation:** A candle closing below $60,132, held for about three periods, would have signaled a real breakdown rather than a sweep.