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Late on Sunday night, President Trump announced that negotiations with Iran would be given another chance. The announcement follows the cancellation of planned strikes against the Iranian regime, which were called off after a number of US allies in the region, most notably Saudi Arabia, claimed that a peace deal was within reach. Another volatile start to the week, but by now market participants should know better than to relax ahead of the Monday open. Crude oil prices shot down rapidly as the Asian session got underway, with Brent Crude sinking to $84 per barrel from $91 at the end of last week. Asian markets themselves are on very unstable footing this morning, following a series of dramatic events at the end last week. In a somewhat predictable move, the Bank of Japan seized upon a moment of weakness in the greenback to start aggressively buying Japanese yen to defend its crumbling exchange rate against the dollar. What was not so predictable is that the following day, the New York Fed joined the effort by offloading a portion of its euro reserves in order to purchase what sleuths believe to be $5-10 billion worth of yen. The BoJ itself is believed to have spent almost $55 billion as part of the effort, making the intervention the largest in Tokyo’s history. The respective central banks have not coordinated to such an extent for 15 years. Meanwhile, over in South Korea, traders are coming to terms with the fact that the Kospi index suffered a 22% loss in July, largely as a result of dangerous amounts of leverage that continue to infect the local stock market. Coupled with the developments surrounding Iran, regional markets have no idea which way to go. Last week was a big one for the earnings calendar, with no fewer than four of the magnificent seven submitting their latest financial reports. To say the results were a mixed bad would be an understatement. Microsoft (MSFT) was one of the clear winners, rising 22% over the course of the week after smashing expectations and recording its biggest one-day gain in the company’s history. Microsoft, along with everyone else, is still spending outrageous amounts of cash on AI infrastructure, but unlike other household names, has proven that such capital allocation is successfully translating into increased revenue. Amazon (AMZN) also emerged victorious last week, for essentially the same reason. Despite raising capital expenditure forecasts to an eye-watering $220 billion this year, Wall Street quickly forgave the online giant after it turned out that AWS revenue and operating income had both exploded higher. Amazon finished the week 17% higher as a result. That’s where the good news ended. Meta Platforms (META) had fallen 6.5% by Friday after investors collectively threw up their arms in frustration at the company’s ludicrous spending habits. The company behind Facebook is almost completely reliant on ad revenue to make money, making the obscene data centre build out costs somewhat harder to justify. Matters were made worse by unexpected legal fees and severance packages, together amounting to several billion dollars. Apple (AAPL) finally flew too close to the sun last week, plummeting over 7% after having escaped most of the market drama so far this year. Unlike its peers, Apple was penalised for not doing enough on the AI side. The company blamed a shortage of memory chips that is severely straining its supply chains, with no apparent solution in sight. A very minor gap in liquidity may be expected today, with Ireland and Canada both closed for business; the only other element of note is the July ISM manufacturing PMI later in the day. While last week saw the publication of the latest PCE price index, giving the Fed the latest pulse on inflation in the United States, this week will complete the picture with the current state of the labour market, starting with the latest JOLT survey tomorrow. The ADP employment change follows on Wednesday, before the weekly jobless claims fill the gap on Thursday, finally paving the way for non-farm payrolls on Friday. Economists are predicting 91k new jobs in July, a rebound from the prior month’s disappointing figures. The earnings calendar returns to standby mode this week, with the exception of the beleaguered space exploration company SpaceX (SPCX), which reports after the bell on Tuesday. Shares closed at a new record low of $108 last Friday – a drawdown of over 50% from the highs established back in mid-June. Iran is likely to dominate events today and throughout the rest of the week, but there is also a good chance that markets have not heard the last about potential interventions on the yen. #IRAN #PEACE #TRUMP About the Author Lawrence J. came from a strong technical and engineering background before pivoting into a more financial role later on in his career. Always interested in international finance, Lawrence is experienced in both traditional markets as well as the emerging crypto markets. He now serves as the financial writer for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment.

Liquidity pools help explain why price so often pushes through an obvious high or low, triggers the stops sitting beyond it and only then begins its real move. Traders who do not recognise these areas frequently place their stop-loss right inside one, which can turn an otherwise reasonable trade into an avoidable loss. Every trader has watched this happen. Price stretches towards a level that has held several times, briefly breaks through it and then reverses as if nothing happened. I used to see those moves as frustrating pieces of bad luck. More often than not, however, the “magnet” attracting price was a cluster of waiting orders, or what we call a liquidity pool. In this guide, we will look at what a liquidity pool is and what it contains, the three different meanings of the term and the chart levels where these pools typically form. We will also cover why price is drawn towards liquidity, five signs that a pool may be targeted and what happens when the orders inside it are swept. Finally, I will explain how traders can map liquidity, position their stops more intelligently and wait for confirmation before entering. We will then bring the process together with one straightforward trading example. A liquidity pool in forex is a concentration of resting orders, primarily stop-losses and pending entries, positioned beyond visible levels such as equal highs and lows, round numbers and session extremes. Large positions require sufficient opposing volume to be filled, so price is often drawn towards these order clusters before its next meaningful move develops. Ready to start putting liquidity analysis into practice? A liquidity pool in forex is a price zone where a large amount of resting order flow accumulates. These clusters usually sit just beyond a level that almost everyone can see, such as a previous high, an equal low or a large round number. The pool contains orders from traders who are already in the market and those waiting to enter. Although these traders may have very different intentions, their orders often end up crowded onto the same narrow shelf. A resting order is an instruction waiting for a specified price or condition before it becomes active. In liquidity analysis, this commonly includes stop-losses and pending entry orders positioned around important chart levels. Read more: What Is a Pending Order? Understanding How It Works in Trading Forex liquidity pools can be divided into two sides: The names describe the orders waiting to be activated, not necessarily the direction price will take afterwards. Buy-side liquidity sits above the market because reaching it releases buy orders; sell-side liquidity sits below because reaching it releases sell orders. More advanced liquidity traders may also distinguish between external range liquidity (ERL) and internal range liquidity (IRL). ERL sits beyond the main high and low at the outer edges of a trading range. IRL is found around smaller swing points and other minor levels inside that range. I never treat the pool itself as automatically bullish or bearish. It merely tells me where the orders are likely to be concentrated; what price does after reaching that area provides the useful information. Read more: Buy Side and Sell Side Liquidity: How to Identify and Use Them The term “liquidity pool” can describe three quite different things in financial markets: a forex order cluster, a DeFi token pool or an institutional dark pool. They all bring liquidity together in some form, but they operate differently and should not be confused with one another. A forex liquidity pool is the chart-level cluster of resting stops and pending entry orders found beyond an obvious price level. It may form above equal highs, below a previous low, around a session extreme or beside another area that many traders are watching. These pools exist on every chart and across every timeframe. A five-minute chart might contain liquidity above the morning’s range, while a daily chart could show a much larger pool beyond the previous month’s high. This is the meaning used by smart money concepts (SMC) and Inner Circle Trader (ICT) traders when they say that price is “hunting liquidity.” It is also the meaning we will use throughout the rest of this guide. The locations, mechanics, warning signs and trading strategies that follow all revolve around this chart-based type of liquidity pool. A DeFi liquidity pool is a smart-contract vault that holds cryptocurrency tokens and allows users to exchange one asset for another. Prices are generally determined by an automated market maker rather than buyers and sellers placing orders in a conventional order book. People who deposit tokens into the pool may receive a share of trading fees, although they also face risks such as smart-contract failure and impermanent loss. This is an investment mechanism within decentralised finance and is unrelated to the chart-level forex pools discussed in this article. An automated market maker is a blockchain-based system that uses a mathematical formula to price and exchange tokens. It allows trades to take place against a liquidity pool without requiring a traditional buyer and seller to be matched directly. Dark pools are private trading venues where institutions can match substantial orders without displaying their full intentions on a public order book. They are mainly associated with equities, where revealing a very large order could move the market before it has been completed. Spot forex has no single central exchange, so conventional dark pools are not a direct equivalent. The closest comparisons are dealer internalisation, where a provider matches client flow internally, and non-displayed liquidity available through certain electronic communication networks. The useful connection is that large participants rarely want to advertise their entire position in advance. That need to find liquidity without showing their hand is one of the reasons chart-level forex pools matter. A liquidity pool forms wherever a price level is obvious enough for a large number of traders to make the same decision. The more visible the level becomes, the more stops and pending entries tend to gather just beyond it. Round numbers are not important because the chart has developed a fondness for tidy arithmetic. They matter because traders repeatedly use them when deciding where to enter, exit and protect positions. Carol Osler’s New York Fed research examined 9,667 conditional orders placed with a large foreign exchange dealing bank. It found that 9.3% of take-profit orders were executed at rates ending in 00, compared with 4.4% of stop-loss orders. The study also found that buy stops tended to cluster just above round figures, while sell stops gathered just below them. New York Fed research That distinction helps explain why a level such as 1.2800 or 150.00 can first behave like a barrier and then become a magnet. Take-profits at the figure may initially slow or reverse price, while the stop orders sitting just beyond it can accelerate the move once the level gives way. In practical terms, the figure itself is often only the centre of the area. The full liquidity pool includes the orders positioned a few pips above or below it, which is exactly where many traders place their stops. Before London opens, for example, I might mark the previous day’s high and low alongside the Asia-session range on GBP/USD. Imagine that the overnight range is approximately 35 pips wide. If London’s opening activity quickly runs below the range low, I do not automatically assume that a new downtrend has begun; I watch how price behaves once the sell-side liquidity has been triggered. That is an illustrative scenario rather than a fixed daily pattern, but the routine remains useful: mark the obvious levels before the active session begins, then observe whether the open runs one side of the range. For this reason, locating the pool is only the first step, the reaction after price reaches it is what turns the map into usable information. Price is drawn towards liquidity pools because size needs counterparties. A substantial position cannot be executed efficiently in a thin market, so larger participants look for areas where a burst of orders is likely to become available. Institutions rarely fill a large position with one click at one price. Doing so could consume the available liquidity, cause considerable slippage and push the market away before the order is complete. When price reaches a liquidity pool, clustered stops and breakout orders activate together. That sudden order flow can provide opportunities for participants trading in the opposite direction to execute more size. To put it simply, the pool is attractive because it produces activity and potential counterparties. This does not mean every move into liquidity has been deliberately engineered by one institution. It means that areas containing more executable order flow are naturally important to anyone trying to transact in size. A stop-loss is conditional rather than a displayed limit order. Until its trigger is reached, it does not appear in the visible market depth as immediately available buying or selling interest. As a result, the area just beyond an obvious high or low can look relatively empty in the displayed book while still containing a large amount of potential order flow. If visible liquidity is thin on the approach, price may travel through the level quickly once those conditional orders begin to activate. The important distinction is that hidden stop orders are not the same as displayed market depth. A stop cluster may create a rush of market orders when triggered, but the quality and price of the resulting fills still depend on the limit liquidity available on the other side. Stop-loss clusters can produce a self-reinforcing move. The first group of stops activates, the resulting market orders push price farther and that movement reaches the next cluster. One wave of orders effectively helps trigger another. New York Fed research found that exchange-rate trends became unusually rapid around levels where stop-loss orders were known to cluster. It also found that the response to stops was larger and lasted longer than the response to take-profit orders, supporting the idea that stops can contribute to price cascades. New York Fed study on stop-loss cascades This is why price may accelerate through a liquidity pool rather than stopping neatly at the original level. Once the sequence begins, each newly triggered order can add momentum to the move. Read more: What is liquidity in Forex and how is it measured The effect commonly called “stop hunting” is real in the sense that stops cluster around predictable levels, and those clusters affect order flow. However, that is not proof that a dealer or institution has singled out an individual retail trader. The FX Global Code requires market participants to handle orders fairly and transparently. Its guidance identifies trading designed to move the market to a client’s stop level as an unacceptable practice. There is a much less dramatic explanation: markets move towards areas where business can be done. Nobody needs to hold an emergency meeting to hunt one trader’s modest GBP/USD position. Once I stopped taking liquidity sweeps personally and began treating them as information, my stop placement improved almost overnight. The market was not sending me a personal insult; my order was simply sitting on the same crowded shelf as everyone else’s. A liquidity pool marked on a chart is static; it only shows where orders are likely to be resting. The following signs help reveal when price may actually be moving towards one. None of these signals should be used in isolation. Their value increases when they appear near one of the obvious locations identified earlier, particularly during an active trading session. Untouched equal highs or lows appear when price turns at almost the same level two or more times without properly breaking it. GBP/USD might top between 1.2795 and 1.2800 on three separate occasions, for example, leaving a clean line of highs visible on the chart. A textbook interpretation may treat this as strong resistance or the beginnings of a double top. From a liquidity perspective, however, every failed attempt can add more orders behind the “wall”. Short sellers place their stop-losses above the highs, while breakout traders leave buy-stop entries in a similar area. The stronger the barrier appears, the more confidence traders may have in leaning against it, and the larger the buy-side liquidity pool can become. I therefore treat untouched equal highs or lows as potential price targets to watch, not dependable walls on which to balance a stop. A fast run develops when price heads towards an obvious liquidity pool through several consecutive candles in the same direction. Pullbacks are shallow or absent, candle bodies remain relatively strong, and price appears to travel towards the level with very little resistance. In plain English, there may be limited opposing order flow along the route. The larger concentration of orders is waiting at the destination, allowing price to move relatively smoothly until it reaches that area. Liquidity traders sometimes describe this as a low-resistance move. Speed alone does not prove that a sweep is coming, particularly around important economic news. Even so, when I see a straight-line move approaching an untouched high, low or session extreme, my first thought is possible liquidity sweep, not automatic breakout trade. Weakening rejections occur when a level continues to hold but each bounce away from it becomes smaller. The first reaction might travel 30 pips, the second only 15 and the third barely 5, while candle closes gradually creep closer to the boundary. This matters because the defending orders in front of the level may be getting absorbed one piece at a time. Buyers repeatedly supporting a low, for example, must keep responding to fresh selling pressure. If each rebound becomes weaker, their ability to defend the area may be fading. Meanwhile, the stop-loss pool beyond the level remains untouched. Once the remaining defence becomes thin enough, price may need only a modest push to reach it. By the third weak test, I would be very reluctant to leave a stop sitting just behind that boundary. A level can technically keep holding even while its ability to reject price is quietly disappearing. Compression appears when candles tighten into an increasingly narrow space beside a high, low or range boundary. The swings become smaller and price presses against the level, rather like a spring being steadily compressed. This pattern shows that buyers and sellers are operating at close quarters, only a short distance from the resting orders beyond the boundary. A relatively small move can now reach the larger cluster and trigger it. That makes compression a common launchpad for a liquidity run. However, the initial break is not necessarily the final direction. Price may push through the boundary, consume the pool and immediately return to the range. When compression hugs an obvious level, the chance of a false break deserves respect. Rather than anticipating the outcome, I wait to see whether the candle closes beyond the level or rejects it and returns inside. The London and New York opens often bring an increase in participation and volatility. If an obvious level survives the quieter Asia session, particularly an Asia-range high or low, it may enter London with its liquidity pool still intact. Running a meaningful pool requires sufficient trading activity. Active session openings can provide that activity as institutional desks, businesses and other market participants begin transacting. This makes session extremes more vulnerable than they were during quieter hours. The same logic can apply when a level formed during London remains untouched as New York activity begins. Nevertheless, an active open is a window to watch rather than a guaranteed signal; economic releases and the broader market trend still matter. For my own morning preparation, the edges of the range that survive Asia and remain untouched into the London open are among the first levels I mark. They show me where price may look for liquidity once meaningful volume returns. Read more: Best time to trade forex: When to enter the market during the day A liquidity pool is built and then it is run. What happens next tells us whether the pool was the target and price is ready to reverse, or whether it was merely the doorway to a genuine continuation. The candle close is often the clearest clue. Here is how the sequence typically unfolds: A move that breaks the level but closes back inside is a potential false break. If price closes beyond the boundary, holds there and attracts follow-through, the move is more likely to be a genuine breakout. Two closely related events can occur during this process: Each event has its own dedicated in-depth guide, so we will not turn this glossary hub into a small library wearing a trench coat. A liquidity sweep is a move through an obvious price level that activates the cluster of stops and pending orders beyond it. Traders then watch whether price returns inside the previous structure or continues beyond the level. Read more: Liquidity Sweep: How It Works and How to Trade It A liquidity grab is a particularly fast version of a sweep, usually seen as a sharp wick through a high or low followed by a quick reversal. The move collects the available orders without maintaining a close beyond the boundary. Read more: Liquidity Grab Guide: Definition, Signals & Trading Techniques Once the clustered orders have been triggered, that particular pool is largely spent. The obvious level may no longer carry the same attraction, and the next untouched concentration of buy-side or sell-side liquidity becomes more relevant. A fast sweep can also leave behind a liquidity void, an area price crossed with limited two-way trading and relatively little consolidation. Because the move passed through so quickly, price may revisit the area later as fresh buying and selling interest develops there. This return is common enough to watch for, but it is not guaranteed. A liquidity void is a thin section of the chart created when price moves rapidly through an area with little two-way trading. Price may return to that zone later, although a void should never be treated as a promise that it must be filled. Read more: Liquidity Void and Liquidity Gap: Definition, Formation & Use Reviewing my own stopped-out trades revealed an uncomfortable pattern: many of my stops had been sitting within roughly ten pips of an obvious high, low or round number. In other words, I had repeatedly placed them inside the pool and then acted surprised when price found them. That simple audit changed how I place orders more than any trading book did. The next step is turning that lesson into a practical routine. Trading around liquidity pools is a routine rather than a prediction. The following steps form a practical playbook, with each one designed to work with the underlying order-flow logic rather than fight against it. Before the London and New York sessions begin, mark the clearest areas where resting orders are likely to be concentrated. My usual shortlist includes: The aim is to map where the fuel may be sitting, not predict exactly what price will do that day. I try to keep the chart to the three or four most obvious levels. If every minor swing is decorated with a line, the useful information soon disappears beneath the artwork. Once the map is prepared, I wait to see which pool price approaches and how it behaves on arrival. This makes the process reactive rather than based on guesswork. The central defensive rule is simple: avoid placing a stop just beyond an obvious level or only a few pips past a round number. That is where many other traders are likely to have reached the same decision. A better stop should sit beyond the expected sweep zone and at a price that genuinely invalidates the trade idea. Depending on the currency pair, timeframe and current volatility, this might mean placing it 15–20 pips beyond a round figure instead of only 2–3 pips away. Those distances are examples, not universal settings. A wider stop does not mean accepting a larger financial loss. Reduce the position size so the amount of money at risk stays the same. For example, if I am considering a GBP/USD long around 1.2820 after price has reclaimed 1.2800, I would not place my stop at 1.2799. That location is barely below the figure and potentially inside the sell-side liquidity pool. I might instead place it below the sweep structure, perhaps 15–20 pips beyond 1.2800 and use a smaller position. The stop became wider, but I stopped volunteering to be free liquidity. Read more: What is a stop-loss order and how to set it The offensive rule is to let the pool be spent before entering. Rather than trading the first poke through an obvious level, wait for evidence that the triggered orders have been absorbed. For a potential reversal, useful confirmation may include: An entry might be taken on the close of the rejection candle or after a smaller structural change confirms that price has turned. The precise method matters less than the discipline of waiting for price to show its hand. Fading a liquidity sweep is never a guaranteed reversal. Some sweeps develop into genuine breakouts, which is why every setup still needs a predefined stop and a clear invalidation point. Read more: Liquidity Sweep: How It Works and How to Trade It After one side of a range has been swept and price has returned inside, the next untouched pool can provide a logical target. This could be the opposite side of the range, a previous high or low, or another clearly defined cluster of resting orders. For example, if price runs below the Asia-session low and then reclaims the range, the buy-side liquidity above the Asia high may become the next potential draw. Traders can also use a fixed risk-to-reward target, such as 2:1, when the opposite pool is too distant or poorly defined. Risk should remain small and consistent. Some traders limit each setup to 1% or 2% of account equity, while more conservative traders use less. The appropriate amount depends on personal circumstances, experience and tolerance for drawdowns. No individual liquidity trade needs to work. It is one setup in a longer series, and that mindset helps prevent an ordinary losing trade from turning into an unnecessary argument with the market. Here is the complete routine demonstrated once, from mapping the pool to planning the entry, stop and target. Hypothetical example, for illustration only Before London opens, EUR/USD has traded between 1.0850 and 1.0880 during the Asia session, creating a 30-pip range. Sell-side liquidity is likely to be resting below 1.0850, while buy-side liquidity may have accumulated above 1.0880. At the London open, price falls through the Asia low and reaches 1.0842, sweeping eight pips beyond the boundary. Stops below 1.0850 activate, but the 15-minute candle then rejects the lower price and closes back inside the range. Rather than buying during the initial fall, the trader waits for that close back above 1.0850. A hypothetical long entry is taken at 1.0858, after the pool has been swept and the range reclaimed. The stop-loss is placed below the sweep wick at 1.0835. This creates approximately 23 pips of risk and positions the stop beyond the liquidity event rather than immediately below the original range low. The target is placed near 1.0905, beyond the Asia high where the opposing buy-side liquidity may be resting. From an entry at 1.0858, that provides approximately 47 pips of potential reward, giving a risk-to-reward ratio just above 2:1. If the account is denominated in pounds, the final profit or loss would be converted into GBP at the applicable exchange rate. The account currency changes the monetary result shown on the platform, but not the chart logic behind the setup. If EUR/USD had instead closed below 1.0850 and continued to hold beneath the range with clear follow-through, the sweep idea would have been invalid. There would be no long trade, the correct response would be to stand aside rather than argue with a genuine breakdown. The sequence is the important part: map the pool, let price sweep it, wait for confirmation and only then define the entry, stop and target. The exact prices will change from one market and session to the next, but the decision-making routine remains the same. A liquidity pool in forex is a price zone where stop-losses and pending entry orders gather in large numbers. These clusters commonly sit beyond visible levels such as equal highs and lows, round figures and session extremes. Mark the levels that most traders can easily see, including previous-day highs and lows, session extremes, equal highs or lows, round numbers and range boundaries. The more obvious and widely watched the level is, the more orders are likely to be resting beyond it. When price reaches a liquidity pool, clustered stops and pending orders activate, producing a burst of market order flow. That activity may help larger participants execute positions and can cause price to accelerate through the original level before either reversing or continuing. A liquidity void is a thin area of the chart that price crossed quickly with relatively little two-way trading. Price may return to the zone as new buying and selling develops there, but the void is not guaranteed to be revisited or completely filled. Avoid placing a stop only a few pips beyond an obvious high, low or round figure. I prefer to position it beyond the likely sweep area, perhaps 15–20 pips past the figure where appropriate and reduce my position size so the amount of cash at risk remains unchanged. Stops genuinely cluster around obvious levels, and the resulting order flow can attract and accelerate price. However, this is generally better understood as market mechanics than a villain targeting an individual trader; the FX Global Code also identifies trading designed to push the market to a client’s stop as unacceptable conduct. A liquidity pool is the place: a cluster of resting orders beyond a visible level. A liquidity sweep is the event: price running through that cluster and activating the orders inside it. Each concept has its own detailed guide. A liquidity pool in forex is simply an area where resting orders collect, primarily stop-losses and pending entries positioned beyond the levels everyone can see. It should not be confused with a DeFi token pool or an institutional dark pool, even though the same term is used for all three. For practical chart analysis, the routine is straightforward. Mark the most obvious highs, lows, session boundaries and round numbers; watch for the five signs that price may be approaching a pool; and let the sweep spend the clustered orders before considering an entry. Most importantly, avoid placing your own stop exactly where the rest of the crowd is likely to have placed theirs. Learning about liquidity did not give me a crystal ball, and no honest trading concept ever will. What it gave me was a better explanation for why price behaves as it does around obvious levels, and a more disciplined way to respond. I no longer see the pool as an enemy. I see it as information. In my experience, the traders who survive are not those who avoid every sweep, but those who learn to spot the obvious places where most traders place their stops and take-profit levels. Lee W. is a seasoned professional trader with over 10 years of experience. Passionate about sharing valuable expertise and unique market insights, Lee W. now serves as an external and independent market analyst for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment. Deeper into liquidity: Related concepts:

The Federal Reserve elected to maintain rates at 3.50-3.75% on Wednesday, prompting a collective sigh of relief throughout financial markets. While largely expected, the decision was by no means set in stone. In fact, three of the twelve members cast in favour of an immediate rate hike, exposing the division within the committee. Those opting for a hike may consider a change of heart after yesterday’s GDP and PCE Price Index data prints however, which together point more in favour of a rate cut than anything else. Q2 GDP growth came in at just 1.5% versus expectations of 2.1% and while the release is only the advance estimate, it nevertheless shows an unforeseen slowdown in US economic activity. Meanwhile, the core PCE Price Index sank to just 0.1% in June, also falling below expectations. Lower inflation is obviously a good thing in the eyes of the Fed, but coupled with slower growth, the central bank may be more inclined to ease rather than tighten monetary policy. A number of high-profile investment firms now believe the Fed will hold rates steady throughout 2026 and well into 2027. The effects on the dollar were immediate and severe. The DXY fell down to 100 by the end of yesterday’s session, down from 101.5 just two days prior. The rare period of weakness was seized upon by Japanese monetary authorities, who took the opportunity to intervene on behalf of their currency with an aggressive bout of yen-buying right in the middle of the New York session. The intervention proved to be clinical and very effective, dragging USDJPY down from 163 to 158 within a couple of hours, before the pair stabilised around the 159.5 mark. The move was executed less than 24 hours before the Bank of Japan’s own interest rate decision, which resulted in a predictable rate hold at 1%. It remains to be seen how much impact such actions will have long-term, because despite the 2.4% drop in the currency pair, the yen was only able to recover to levels seen just two months ago. The BoJ had better have more ammunition in reserve. Microsoft (MSFT) recorded its largest single-day jump in history on Thursday after delivering a bombshell Q4 earnings report. The software giant surged 15.5% after posting better-than-expected earnings and revealing lower capital expenditures than predicted. The latter point has been a thorn in the side of many companies recently, including Meta Platforms (META), which also reported after the bell on Wednesday. The company behind Facebook beat on revenue but fell short on earnings per share. However, the figure that really had investors running for the exit were the capital expenditure estimates, which are forecast to rise to $135 billion, surpassing predictions by a solid $10 billion. The massive rise in AI spending continues to spook markets, as evidenced by yesterday’s price action. Far from Microsoft’s meteoric rise, Meta collapsed 8% on Thursday following the sub-par earnings report. The conflicting performances are set to continue later today, following the latest earnings from Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN). The former slid 7% in after-hours trading, while in contrast the latter rose almost 10%. The roller-coaster ride continues in semiconductors, with AMD, Seagate (STX), Western Digital (WDC) and Micron (MU) all boasting double-digit gains yesterday. Major infrastructure spending by the likes of Microsoft and Meta is obviously good news for the companies responsible for providing the necessary hardware and the latest earnings reports certainly show no evidence of said spending slowing down. The positive sentiment has finally spilled over into the Asian semiconductor sector, which up until last night had been getting systematically dismantled for over a month strait. The Korean Kospi index had fallen to a 40% drawdown by the time trading closed on Thursday evening, but the benchmark is absolutely flying this morning, surging 15% within minutes of the opening bell. Samsung and SK Hynix are the obvious drivers behind the move, together accounting over half the index’s weight; both rose over 20% as trading got underway. The leverage that drove Korean stocks higher earlier in the year was equally responsible for their downfall after the June peak. Despite the huge pullback, the Kospi is still up 50% so far this year, making it by far one of the best performing markets in the world. Recent moves, both up and down, suggest much of the leverage has yet to unwind; the drama may not be over quite yet. Japanese chipmaker stocks were also pumping fiercely this morning, rapidly driving the Nikkei 225 index 5% higher within the first hour of trading. Should the momentum continue throughout the day, semiconductor stocks will have had the ride of a lifetime. #MSFT #AMZN #AAPL About the Author Lawrence J. came from a strong technical and engineering background before pivoting into a more financial role later on in his career. Always interested in international finance, Lawrence is experienced in both traditional markets as well as the emerging crypto markets. He now serves as the financial writer for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment.

For all the talk surrounding the Clarity Act, not many people can pinpoint what the bill actually does, nor what it aims to change. Hard to blame them; 250 pages of impenetrable legal jargon is not for everyone. Nevertheless, behind the walls of text lies a fundamental rewriting of how cryptocurrencies are to be treated in the future. The impact of the bill cannot be overstated; the existent legal framework is about to be burnt to the ground. Cryptocurrencies have had a rough few years. Former SEC Chairman Gary Gensler was notoriously harsh on the emerging industry, providing little in terms of guidance but plenty in terms of punishment. Rules were unclear, inconsistent and selectively enforced. Companies did not know what was allowed and what was not. In the absence of clear regulations, attempts at innovation were often met with fines, de-listings, injunctions, forced shutdowns and years of costly legal battles. In one instance, the SEC’s overreach was so bad that a federal judge sanctioned the commission, leading Gensler himself to admit that the case in question was “not well handled”. There are many, many more examples of poor conduct on behalf of the agency. The situation was a bit like pinning someone down, grabbing their hand and going through the “why are you punching yourself” routine. Not particularly conducive to technological progress. Fortunately, the current US administration has adopted a more lenient stance on the matter, as exemplified by the Clarity Act itself. Time to stop the bullying. The Clarity Act establishes a clear regulatory path that would allow cryptocurrencies to escape the wrath of the SEC and instead move over to the protective umbrella of the CFTC. As a reminder, the Securities and Exchange Commission deals with, as the name suggests, securities. Meanwhile, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission deals with, drum roll, commodities. In the US, securities face far more regulatory scrutiny than commodities, so classifying cryptocurrencies as digital commodities immediately solves many problems. Unfortunately, the US government cannot simply declare all cryptocurrencies to be commodities overnight, because doing so would open the door to massive fundraising fraud. There has to be a well-defined mechanism allowing cryptocurrencies to earn the title of digital commodity. To do this, the Clarity Act introduces the notion of blockchain maturity, which demands of each project a certain level of decentralisation, dilution and utility. The path can be summarised as follows: In order to qualify as mature, the blockchain must: On top of the above, all currently operational blockchains must have at least 50% of their coins/tokens in circulation, i.e. away from the founding team. As reasonable as they are, many blockchains would struggle to meet the above criteria. Some chains, such as BNB, would likely fail on the decentralisation front, while others, such as HYPE or SUI, would probably fail due to their token supplies being insufficiently diluted. Upon launch, a blockchain falls under the remit of the SEC by default, as a restricted digital asset. Later, once the development team can prove its technology to be sufficiently mature, it can submit a formal application to the SEC, with supporting evidence. The commission then has 60 days to review the application before delivering a verdict. If successful, the blockchain in question gains the coveted maturity status, thereby placing it under the jurisdiction of the CFTC. The process is not permanent. Should the development team renege on any given requirement, the blockchain will be stripped of its digital commodity status and be dragged back under the authority of the SEC. As with any legal text, there is room for interpretation. It is up to each company to defend itself and its actions within the regulatory framework provided. As mentioned above, digital commodities face much less regulatory scrutiny than their SEC-sanctioned counterparts. The reduced legal hurdles do not just affect the founding team, they also make life easier for exchanges and investors. As far as the founding team is concerned, the shift means that regular financial audits and corporate risk assessments are no longer necessary. A digital commodity is not considered the legal property of a company; it is instead recognised as a public utility driven by supply and demand. It is simply a decentralised network, free for anyone to use, unable to be fined or forced into compliance. As far as exchanges are concerned, hosting unregistered securities can cause huge problems, often incurring fines and even SEC enforcement lawsuits. The shift towards digital commodities mostly does away with such concerns, as there are almost no legal barriers to listing digital commodities on trading platforms. The biggest shift of all lies with investors. Institutional asset managers are subject to strict rules about what they can and cannot do. Blackrock or Fidelity cannot simply ape into the latest ICO craze, nor can they accumulate vast wallets of unregistered cryptocurrencies; strict legal barriers prevent them from doing so. On the other hand, there is very little to stop them from acquiring huge balance sheets of commodities, digital or otherwise. It used to be a bit of a meme back in the day, but institutional money is indeed waiting for regulatory clarity before entering crypto in earnest. The relentless buying of crypto ETFs is proof enough that the appetite is there; all that is left is for the Clarity Act to be signed into law. The scope of the bill is in fact quite large and includes elements that are not particularly relevant to the average crypto user, such as those prohibiting the Federal Reserve from issuing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), those relating to Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering standards, as well as other, equally dull clauses. Frustratingly, it was precisely these clauses that held up the bill for so long. It matters little now. At long last, the wait is over. Traditional and decentralised finance finally have the regulatory clarity they fought so long and so hard to obtain. Make no mistake, the Clarity Act represents one of the most monumental shifts in financial law since the Securities Act of 1933. A new chapter begins.

Semiconductor stocks have been run into the ground so far this week. The pain started on Monday when anti-AI sentiment reared its ugly head to obliterate all the usual suspects listed in New York, before carrying over to the Far East on Tuesday and then maintaining enough momentum throughout the day to sweep through Western markets a second time. Yesterday may as well have been judgement day as far as semiconductors were concerned, with every company even remotely associated with the sector getting systematically destroyed. Japanese giants Tokyo Electron and Advantest both incurred double-digit losses on Tuesday morning, South Korean chipmaking rivals Samsung and SK Hynix fell 13% and 15% respectively, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) shed 3%. The selloff spread to Europe, where ASML fell for the second day running on the Amsterdam stock exchange after losing 8.5% on Monday, before reaching US shores and causing mayhem on Wall Street for the second day running. A number of companies have incurred truly shocking losses so far this week. SanDisk (SNDK) has been hammered no less than 24% since Monday; AMD is down 13%; Seagate (STX) is down 12%; Western Digital (WDC) and Micron (MU) are both 11% in the red. While harrowing, the damage was strictly confined to the semiconductor sector, with the wider US indices largely shrugging off the panic that has pervaded the chipmaking scene. Even the Nasdaq 100 itself (NDX) only faltered 1% when all was said and done, while the S&P 500 (SPX) and Dow Jones (DJI) managed to close yesterday’s session in the green. The same cannot be said for the Korean Kospi index, which is afflicted by rather idiosyncratic quirks. The Kospi suffers from extreme concentration, whereby Samsung and SK Hynix together account for half of the index’s market cap, despite including over 800 companies in total. The benchmark is also beset by leveraged ETFs, which comprise a significant percentage of the stock exchange’s trading volume. Combined, these features are having disastrous consequences for the South Korean index, which plummeted 11% yesterday and has collapsed a staggering 35% over the last six weeks. The lull in military activity between the US and Iran continued to drag crude oil prices lower on Tuesday, with the Brent Crude benchmark falling to $84 per barrel and WTI contracts closing only marginally lower. As always, reliable information has not been forthcoming and the situation remains murky. With or without a peace deal, global demand for oil remains low, while markets are aware that OPEC still has plenty of capacity to increase production. Oil producing nations are also stepping up efforts to improve supply chain resilience, particularly around the middle east, with countries investing in new pipelines and exploring alternative sea routes. Peace talks between Russia and Ukraine may also be on the cards after a meeting between Zelensky and Trump raised the possibility of reopening a line of dialogue with Vladimir Putin. A conclusion to hostilities on that end introduces the possibility of sanctions being lifted against Russian oil exports, further alleviating supply concerns. The latest interest rate decision from the Federal Reserve is mere hours away, and markets are still not sure what that decision will be. As it stands, traders are eyeing it up as a toss-up between a hold and a hike, with FedWatch leaning 70-30 in favour of the former, which is an uncommonly noncommittal split this close to the line. Suffice to say a surprise rate hike would introduce even more volatility into already chaotic markets. Traders are on edge and have every right to be so. The US dollar is looking strong even without moving interest rates; an adjustment to the upside may send the DXY into territory not explored in many moons. Aside from that, the earnings calendar steps into overdrive later today, with Microsoft (MSFT) and Meta Platforms (META) reporting after the US session closes and Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) reporting tomorrow. On top of the above, any surprise announcement regarding Iran, Russia, or even crypto for that matter could send markets flying with very little warning. #SOXX #OIL #FOMC About the Author Lawrence J. came from a strong technical and engineering background before pivoting into a more financial role later on in his career. Always interested in international finance, Lawrence is experienced in both traditional markets as well as the emerging crypto markets. He now serves as the financial writer for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment.

SHARE A liquidity void is the low-volume imbalance a one-way price surge leaves behind on the chart, a run of price that almost nobody traded against. A liquidity gap goes by a different name but points at the same thing, which is why traders reach for either word. A pair sits quiet all morning, then a data release hits and it tears 60 pips higher in three or four candles while you watch, caught between chasing it and letting it go. Chase it, and more often than not price snaps straight back through that thin, fast move and takes your stop with it. That empty stretch has a name, the liquidity void, and reading it before you trade it is what this guide is about. This guide starts with what the two terms mean and how they differ from the fair value gap, the smaller three-candle imbalance traders also track. From there it covers how these imbalances form and how to spot them on your own chart. Then the practical part: why price so often returns to fill a void, when to trade one, and when to leave it alone. A liquidity void is a sharp, one-directional price move that leaves almost no traded volume between two levels, usually because there were no opposing orders to slow it down. Price tends to come back and refill some of that empty stretch later. The practical playbook is simple: wait for the retrace into the void rather than chase the move that created it. Ready to study liquidity on a live chart? A liquidity void is the imbalance a strong, one-directional move leaves across several candles: plenty of ground covered, almost no volume traded, no pause to trade back through the range and wicks that scarcely overlap. On the chart, price was at one level, then suddenly at another, and very little business was done in between. Break the term apart and it explains itself. Liquidity is the pool of buyers and sellers ready to trade against you; void is what you have when they are not there. Put the two together and you get a run of price with no one opposing it, which is exactly why it moved through in one go. The phrase comes from ICT (Inner Circle Trader) and Smart Money vocabulary, a school of chart analysis built around how large institutions move price. There, displacement, a fast institutional push out of a range, is said to leave these voids behind. Elsewhere you'll hear the same thing loosely called an imbalance or an inefficiency. Different labels, same patch of chart. One boundary worth drawing early: this is not the same as an opening gap, the true blank space between Friday's close and Monday's open. A void sits inside continuous intraday candles. Price did trade through it, just very thinly and very fast. Read more: Gap Trading Strategy: How Traders Read and Trade Market Gaps In a trading context, a liquidity gap describes a patch of the order book holding very few resting orders. Touch that patch and price skips straight to wherever the next orders sit, printing the same picture a void does, which is why so many traders treat the two words as interchangeable. A quick caveat: in institutional finance, the same phrase describes a mismatch between a bank's assets and liabilities. That meaning has nothing to do with charts, and this article covers the trading sense only. The finer differences between a void, a gap and a fair value gap are laid out in the comparison table further down. Voids are born in consolidation. While price chops sideways, buy and sell orders stack up on both sides of the range. When the breakout finally comes, one side swallows every opposing order in its path, and with nothing left to absorb the flow, price runs without a retrace until it reaches the next area where orders actually rest. A few situations produce them again and again. Major data releases wipe one side of the book in seconds. Session handovers, the quiet stretch after New York closes and before Tokyo builds volume, leave the book thin enough for modest orders to move price a long way. And large institutional entries create the classic displacement leg that ICT traders study. A bullish void is a run of long-bodied green candles climbing from a consolidation low with wicks that barely touch each other. Say EUR/USD has been grinding just above 1.1500 for two sessions, then a dovish central bank surprise lands. Three candles later it's at 1.1583, and the stretch from roughly 1.1508 to 1.1573 printed almost no volume. That thin 65-pip corridor is the void, and the numbers here are purely illustrative. The first few of these I ever traded, I took the tall green candles as a reason to buy. What I missed completely was that the move had already happened. The trade worth having was waiting for price to sink back into that corridor, not chasing it near the top. The bearish version is the mirror image: consecutive long red candles falling with no bounce. Picture GBP/USD sitting on support until a weak UK retail sales number cracks it, and the pair drops from 1.2678 to 1.2604 in a handful of one-way candles. Direction matters more than size here. A void that fires in the same direction as the higher-timeframe trend tends to be respected when price revisits it. A counter-trend void is often just run straight through. Keep that in mind, because the whole trading approach later in this article leans on it. The bearish voids I trust are the ones that form while the market is already falling. The ones that show up against a strong uptrend have cost me enough over the years that I now treat them as bait rather than a signal, and I wait for the higher timeframe to actually roll over before acting on one. Three names, one family of imbalances, three different sizes. The void is the multi-candle displacement container. The gap is the empty space price jumps across where orders are thin. The fair value gap (FVG) is the smallest unit: a single three-candle imbalance where the wicks of the first and third candle fail to overlap. One void often holds several FVGs stacked inside it. Traders borrow these words from each other constantly, so don't lose sleep over the labels. What matters is being able to point at the part of the chart where the other side went missing, whatever anyone chooses to call it. You can spot a void with a simple checklist: Marking one by hand takes seconds. Draw a box around the whole one-way leg, from its first candle to its last, then split it with a line down the middle. That midpoint is the level most traders keep an eye on for a partial refill. If you'd rather not eyeball it, the tools already exist. TradingView carries liquidity void and FVG indicators that shade these imbalances for you, and the same search turns up free versions for MT4 and MT5. They all do broadly the same job: highlight candles whose wicks fail to overlap and shade the empty stretch between them. Whatever the indicator paints still needs a human check against the list above. An indicator saves you time; judging whether the displacement behind the box actually means anything is always your job. Not right away, not guaranteed, and usually not completely. Those are the honest answers to the three questions everyone asks. Does it fill immediately? Usually not. A void can sit open for hours, days, sometimes weeks, and nothing obliges the market to deal with it on any particular schedule. Is a fill guaranteed? No. A void inside a strong trend can stay open indefinitely. Treating a fill as certain is how traders end up fighting a trend with nothing but hope. Does it fill completely? The common case is a partial refill to around the halfway point of the void before the original direction takes over again. ICT traders call that midpoint the consequent encroachment, which is just a formal name for the halfway point. The behaviour tells you more than any fixed rule ever could. When a void simply refuses to fill, that alone is a sign momentum is strong. A half-fill that gets bought or sold straight back up is one of the most common with-trend entries this concept offers. The trade that drummed this into me was a GBP/USD short I kept open waiting for a void to fill all the way. It refilled about two thirds, turned, and ran on without me. Now I plan for a partial fill from the outset, taking something off near the midpoint rather than holding out for the full round trip. The setup earns your attention when a few conditions line up: Timing the session matters more than most beginners expect. The London and New York overlap generally offers the best trade quality of the day, and quiet hours produce the sloppiest. Read more: Best time to trade forex: When to enter the market during the day Think of the void as a fast lane and the areas either side of it as the destinations. Resting orders cluster at old highs, old lows and consolidation zones. Between those clusters, the book is thin. So price crosses the void quickly, then slows, stalls and reacts once it arrives where liquidity actually sits. The refill has the same logic. Markets tend to return to prices where little business was done and trade through them properly the second time. That's why voids behave like magnets: not because of anything mystical, but because untraded prices are unfinished business for the order flow. Put the two ideas together and your chart gets simpler. Voids tell you how quickly price is likely to travel; the clusters either side tell you where it is likely to pause. Reading the two together makes targets much easier to place. It took me longer than I would like to admit to stop treating the void itself as somewhere to trade. Once I started reading it as the road between two clusters of orders, and only acted when price arrived at the cluster on the far side, my entries got cleaner and my stops got smaller. Read more: What is liquidity in Forex and how is it measured Here is the full process, step by step. It's the same sequence whether you trade the long side or the short side. Check the daily and four-hour charts for the trend and for a clear displacement leg. No clear direction, no trade. Frame the one-way move from start to finish and draw the halfway line. These two levels are your entire map. This is the patience step. If price never comes back, there was no trade, and that's fine. On the fifteen-minute or five-minute chart, wait for structure to turn back in the trend's favour before acting. Entry near the midpoint, stop beyond the opposite edge of the void, target at the next area where liquidity visibly rests. A long example, with every number purely illustrative. GBP/JPY is trending up on the daily and prints a one-hour void from 187.24 to 188.41. You box it, mark 187.83 as the midpoint, and wait. Two sessions later price dips to 187.79, the fifteen-minute chart puts in a higher low, and you go long with a stop under 187.14 and a target at the previous high near 189.16. The short side mirrors it, again with illustrative numbers. USD/JPY breaks down through a range, leaving a void from 151.84 down to 150.93. The bounce stalls around the 151.38 midpoint during London, structure rolls over on the five-minute chart, and the short targets the low at 150.62 with a stop above 151.94. In my experience, patience is the entire edge here. Nothing about this setup rewards speed; the market either comes back to your level or it doesn't, and my own results only settled down once I stopped negotiating with that. And on risk: the process tilts the odds, nothing more. Position sizing and stop discipline still come first, on every single trade. Jumping in while the displacement is still running costs traders more money than anything else in this topic. Here's what actually happens to the account that tries it. I learned this one with real money. When the soft US inflation print landed in November 2023 and EUR/USD went vertical, I bought straight into the surge, into a candle that looked unstoppable. The spread had stretched to almost three times its usual size at the moment I clicked. The refill began about a minute later and took my stop out 43 pips below my entry — and the move then carried on without me. The direction was right. The entry was still wrong. So when you watch a void form in real time, box it, set an alert at the midpoint, and walk away until price comes back. This concept earns its place in a toolkit, and it also has edges you should know before you rely on it: Use the void alongside trend, structure and sensible risk control. On its own it was never meant to carry a whole system. A liquidity void is the low-volume imbalance left when price runs one way across several candles with no internal retrace, usually after a breakout or news release. Price tends to return later and refill part of that stretch, which is why traders track voids as future reference zones. In forex, a liquidity gap is a thin stretch of resting orders that lets price jump between levels, producing the same chart picture as a void. The institutional term of the same name, a bank's asset-liability mismatch, is unrelated to chart trading. Not quite. A fair value gap is a single three-candle imbalance where the outer wicks fail to overlap, while a liquidity void is the larger multi-candle displacement that often contains several fair value gaps inside it. Think of the FVG as the unit and the void as the container. No, a fill is never guaranteed, and voids inside strong trends can stay open for a long time. The most common outcome is a partial refill to around the halfway point, and a useful warning sign is fresh consolidation building beyond the void, which suggests the market has accepted the new level and may not come back. Look for consecutive long candle bodies, wicks that barely overlap and no retrace during the move, ideally on a one-hour chart or higher. The most common mistake is labelling any big candle a void, so check the middle of the move: if price paused and traded back through part of it, it does not qualify. Yes, the logic carries across forex, gold, indices and crypto because every liquid market leaves imbalances when one side overwhelms the other. The deeper the market's liquidity, the cleaner the signal tends to be. A liquidity void and a liquidity gap are two names for the same thing: the stretch of chart where nobody was on the other side of the trade. Price runs through it fast, tends to come back for at least part of it, and rewards the trader who mapped it in advance. If you keep only three things from this guide, keep these. Recognise the void by its long bodies and barely-overlapping wicks. Let price come back to you before you act. And put your stop on the far side of the void, at the level that actually proves the idea wrong. For me, the void mostly changed my timing. I still trade the same pairs in the same sessions; I just spend more of the day waiting at levels I marked in advance, and far less of it reacting to candles that have already left. From here, the natural next step is to study where price is usually headed when it leaves a void: the pools of buy side and sell side liquidity above old highs and below old lows, and the liquidity sweep that so often marks the turn. Read those alongside this guide and the whole liquidity playbook starts to fit together. The RADEX MARKETS editorial team consists of seasoned financial professionals and market observers. Dedicated to delivering objective market summaries, macroeconomic insights, and educational content, the team strives to keep traders well-informed in a fast-paced financial environment. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment. Deeper into liquidity: Related concepts: