Liquidity Sweep
A push through an obvious high or low that reverses quickly — price reaching for the stop orders resting beyond the level rather than breaking out.
Also called: stop hunt · liquidity grab · sweep · BSL · SSL · inducement
What it means
Stop-loss orders cluster just beyond visible highs and lows, which makes those levels pools of resting liquidity. A sweep is a move that takes out such a level and then reverses, the interpretation being that the move existed to fill large orders against those stops rather than to establish a new trend.
Pools above highs are buy-side liquidity (BSL); pools below lows are sell-side liquidity (SSL). The more obvious the level, the more liquidity rests beyond it — equal highs and equal lows are the clearest examples, because the second touch tells everyone where to put a stop.
An inducement is the smaller version: a minor level swept to pull traders into position just before the real move goes the other way.
How OptionLab Pro’s engine uses it
In the live engine
A Liquidity Sweep scores 2 in the SMC weight table. Pools require at least 10 candles to form and are grouped by calendar date rather than by HH:MM timestamp, so an intraday level is not fragmented into separate pools per minute. A major BSL or SSL sweep suppresses an Inducement Sweep in the same direction — without that suppression the engine would count one event twice, as both the inducement and the sweep it induced.
go/internal/engine/smc/detect.go (SSL/BSL pools, IDM suppression)The common mistake
Where traders get this wrong
Reading every level break as a sweep. A sweep requires the reversal; without it you are calling a genuine breakout a stop hunt and positioning against a live trend. The level being taken out is necessary but not sufficient.
Go deeper
There is a full lesson on this in the Academy, with an interactive widget and a Hindi translation.
Related terms
Educational and analytical content only. OptionLab Pro is not a SEBI-registered investment adviser or research analyst and does not give buy or sell recommendations. Derivatives trading carries a high risk of loss.