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Investors continued to rotate out of semiconductors and back into the magnificent seven this week, leaving many of the big names in the industry battered and scarred. The semiconductor sector as a whole has undergone a heavy bout of profit-taking since the end of June and this week was no exception. SanDisk (SNDK) lost 8% on Wednesday and then a further 12% during yesterday’s session; Western Digital (WDC) put in back-to-back 9% losses over the same time frame; Micron (MU) shed 8% and then another 6% the following day, while Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) fared slightly better with 3% and 5% losses respectively. Newly listed SK Hynix is doing the best it can to weather the inevitable post-IPO chaos, but it too succumbed to the negative sentiment by falling 9% and 14% over the last two consecutive sessions. Speaking of post-IPO chaos, SpaceX (SPCX) has officially fallen below its listing price of $135, sinking to just $126 per share in overnight trading after the company was forced to scrub a test launch yesterday evening. The semiconductor sector as a whole enjoyed fantastic gains up until about the halfway point of the year, but a quick glance at the charts suggests that for many, the time has come to take some money off the table. The 25th of June appears to be the approximate turning point, marking the local bottom for almost all of the magnificent seven, a number of which have undergone impressive rallies since. Apple (AAPL) and Meta Platforms (META) are both up over 20% since last month’s lull, while Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN) have also gained in the double-digit range, suggesting that the flight from semiconductors is not a renunciation of the AI trade itself, but more so a re-evaluation of who seeks to gain the most from it. Tallying everything up, the big seven have added $1.5 trillion in market cap so far this month, while chip and memory stocks have lost around the same amount, balancing out the equation. Looking at US indices as a whole, which have been uncharacteristically dull over the last few weeks, it is easy to see how market participants overlooked the shift. Unfortunately, the pain in semiconductors may not be over just yet, as the negative sentiment appears to be spilling over into the Japanese markets this morning. The Nikkei 225 lost 4% within the first hour of the opening bell, dragged down by the likes of Advantest and Tokyo Electron, companies intimately linked to semiconductor production. Funnily enough, South Korean markets are closed today due to a national holiday, isolating Korean traders from the damage. Until Monday that is. Wednesday’s PPI reading did indeed follow suit from the huge drop in consumer prices that surprised markets the day prior, with the headline figure coming in at negative 0.3%, meaning that producer prices went down in June. A certain amount of scepticism is always healthy, but interest rate traders further rejected the notion of a rate hike at the end of the month, with odds now pointing to a 90% chance of a hold during the next FOMC meeting. Whenever the next rate adjustment may arrive, the dollar remains strong, with the DXY still closer to 101 than to 100, which is making life difficult for precious metals investors. Gold could not hold on to $4,000 yesterday and is lingering precariously above the void early this morning. Silver is not looking any better after falling to $55.5 per ounce on Thursday and sinking lower still at the time of writing. Bitcoin is practically euphoric in comparison, settling down to $63,500 per coin but still up 10% from July lows. Not much happening on the Iran front, leaving oil prices to stabilise for now, with the Brent Crude benchmark hovering around $85 per barrel and maintaining a decent gap with West Texas contracts, which are currently sitting at a mere $79. #SOXX #SNDK #WDC 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.

The June CPI report was music to the ears of investors on Tuesday, as inflation in the United States cooled even faster than economists had been predicting. The headline year-over-year figure fell to 3.5% from 4.2% in May, while the month-over-month change actually saw prices deflate by 0.4%. The slowdown in inflation was not unexpected, but the extent of the fall has taken markets by surprise. Falling crude oil prices in June were always going to have a positive effect on the latest CPI reading, but crucially, the core inflation rate, which excludes energy prices, also underwent an acute drop, settling to 0% on a monthly basis, while the yearly figure sank from 2.9% down to 2.6%. The dramatic easing of inflation also makes the Federal Reserve’s job a little easier, with interest rate traders now mostly writing off the possibility of a rate hike during the next meeting on the 29th of July. For that matter, the odds of a rate hike happening before the end of the year also decreased, with markets no longer as confident as they were on Monday. Despite the positive signs, Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh made it clear during his congressional testimony yesterday that the central bank remains committed to tackling increasing consumer prices, claiming that the Fed has “no tolerance” for high inflation. The Producer Price Index follows later today, possibly adding another layer of confirmation to the cooling inflation narrative. With that said, crude oil prices are once again on the rise this week, with Brent Crude hitting $85 per barrel while WTI trails behind at $79. The prospect of lower rates on the dollar played into the hands of precious metals during yesterday’s session, with gold gaining $50 per ounce to reach $4,050 by the daily close, while silver managed to add a dollar to its tally, closing the day at $58.7 per ounce. All well and good, but the big winner on Tuesday was Bitcoin, which shot up to near $65,000 per coin, thereby locking in its highest daily close in the past four weeks. The wider cryptocurrency sphere likewise enjoyed a rare moment in the sun, while being perfectly cognizant of the fact that the Clarity Act bill is once again stalling through the US Senate, as banking groups urge lawmakers to strengthen the provisions relating to stablecoins. Speaking of banking groups, a number of major US banks reported strong earnings yesterday, translating to equally strong moves for JP Morgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC) and particularly Goldman Sachs (GS), which rose an impressive 9% after reporting record-breaking quarterly profits. The rise in Goldman Sachs was just enough the cover the calamitous drop in IBM, which plummeted an eye-watering 25% yesterday after the company pre-announced its earnings results. The report did not make for good reading, with revenue falling far below expectations and earnings per share nowhere near estimates. In a statement, CEO Arvind Krishna claimed that customers had turned their spending power towards storage and memory purchases, shunning the mainframe and software products that IBM is known for. All in all, it was a mixed bag for US indices, with the Dow closing flat and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq making minor gains. #CPI #BTC #IBM 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.

A liquidity grab is a fast, usually single-candle move that pokes just beyond an obvious high or low, triggers the stop-loss orders resting there, then snaps straight back. The name fits: the move exists to grab the orders — the liquidity — sitting behind that level, and little else. If you've ever shorted a clean break of an obvious low, been stopped out within a minute, then watched price run exactly where you first expected — you've been on the wrong side of one. I have, more times than I'd like to admit, and the frustrating part is that the market never proved my idea wrong. It just collected my stop first. In this guide you'll learn what a liquidity grab is, how it differs from a liquidity sweep, the 5 signals one is forming, the techniques to trade it — with worked EUR/USD examples and MT4/MT5 tips — and the 3 traps that catch most traders. Let's start with the definition. A liquidity grab is a fast, usually single-candle move that pokes just beyond an obvious high or low to trigger the stop-loss and breakout orders clustered there, then immediately reverses, leaving a long wick. Traders read it as a footprint of larger order flow and trade the reversal — with confirmation — rather than chasing the initial poke. Ready to put this into practice? A liquidity grab is a sharp, brief move where price trades just beyond a level where orders are concentrated — a prior swing high or low, the previous day's or week's high or low, or a round number — triggering the cluster of stops and pending orders there before being quickly rejected. It typically completes inside a single candle, which ends up with a long wick and a small body. Orders build up on both sides of the market. Buy-side liquidity (BSL) rests above obvious highs — short-sellers' stops plus breakout buy orders — while sell-side liquidity (SSL) rests below obvious lows. A grab of SSL below a low tends to set a bullish bias; a grab of BSL above a high, a bearish one. Buy-side liquidity is the pool of buy orders resting above obvious highs — stops on short positions plus breakout buy orders. Sell-side liquidity is the mirror image: sell orders resting below obvious lows. Read more: What is liquidity in Forex and how is it measured The one-line version: a bullish liquidity grab dips below an obvious low, trips sell-side stops, then snaps back up; a bearish liquidity grab spikes above an obvious high, trips buy-side stops, then drops back down. One thing I learned early: a grab on its own is not an entry. It tells you a level was run and rejected — a bias and a zone worth watching — nothing more. The next question is how it differs from its bigger cousin, the liquidity sweep. The two terms are often used interchangeably, and both describe price tripping clustered orders by moving beyond an obvious level. The useful distinction is scale and duration. A grab is the small, fast one: a single-candle poke that snaps straight back. A sweep is the bigger, slower cousin: it can push into the liquidity zone and linger there for several candles before reversing. Read more: Liquidity Sweep: How It Works and How to Trade It In practice traders use the labels loosely, and that's fine — what matters isn't the name but that an obvious level was run and rejected. In my own trading the split is practical: the one-candle version I treat as a quick scalp, while price that camps beyond the level for several candles gets the sweep playbook — wider stop, more patience. Mixing the two is what actually costs money: I once managed a grab with a sweep's patience and watched 25 pips of paper profit make the round trip back to my entry. Two neighbouring terms are worth separating. A grab is a quick liquidity event; a Change of Character (CHoCH) is the confirmation that market structure has actually shifted afterwards — many traders wait for a CHoCH before trusting a grab. A Break of Structure (BOS) is the opposite outcome: a genuine break that holds and continues the trend. Same-looking candle, opposite result — the close decides which one you got. A Change of Character (CHoCH) is when price breaks its most recent internal high or low against the prevailing trend, hinting at a reversal. A Break of Structure (BOS) is a break of a prior high or low that holds, confirming the trend is continuing. Knowing the difference is step one. Spotting a grab while it forms is where it starts to pay — and it announces itself in five ways. To read the signals, it helps to know why liquidity grabs happen in the first place. Large participants need other people's orders to fill size without heavy slippage — the gap between the price you expect and the price you actually get — so price is drawn to where those orders sit. Running the stops absorbs enough volume to complete a position, traps retail traders on the wrong side (their forced exits become fuel for the real move), and secures a better average entry at the brief extreme. That's the smart-money (SMC/ICT) reading of these moves — a useful lens, not a guarantee. With the motive clear, here are the five signals worth watching. The signature candle is a fast poke beyond the level that leaves a long wick and a small body — close in shape to a Dragonfly doji below a low, or a Gravestone doji above a high. The wick is the footprint of the event: stops fired and were absorbed, then price was pushed back because no real buyers or sellers stepped in to hold the break. A doji is a candle with a small body and a long wick, showing price travelled far but closed near where it opened. At an extreme, it signals the move was rejected. Read more: 15 Best Chart Patterns Every Trader Should Know The reversal is fast, and the candle closes back on the original side of the level — the market failed to accept the new price. The mechanics are simple: once the clustered orders are taken, the fuel is gone, so price falls back through the level. If it closes and holds beyond instead, you're looking at a real break, not a grab. Based on my experience, the candle close is the only referee worth trusting here — mid-candle, every poke looks like a breakout. Watch for a burst of volume as the stops fire, followed by a quick dry-up. The spike is the mass stop-out; the fade tells you there was no genuine follow-through behind the move. What I've noticed is that the fade tells you more than the spike: the burst says stops fired, while the silence afterwards says nobody wants the new price. One honest caveat: spot forex has no centralised exchange, so any volume you see is tick or broker volume — a useful hint, not an official count. Grabs form where orders pile up predictably — and the more obvious the level, the more liquidity rests just beyond it. Before the London and New York sessions I mark the previous day's high and low, the visible swing points, and the nearest round number; most grabs I've traded happened at a level I marked hours earlier. Read more: How to Read Forex Charts for Traders Grabs bunch around the London and New York opens, when the largest pool of resting orders meets rising volatility. More clustered liquidity plus faster price is the ideal window for running stops. The trade-off is that spreads can widen in those same minutes — a cost we'll come back to in the traps section. The worst grab that ever caught me came 4 minutes after the London open: GBP/USD poked 6 pips under the Asian-session low, collected my stop, and was 30 pips higher within the quarter-hour. I've kept a session marker on my charts ever since. Next, the playbook for actually trading one. Once a grab is confirmed, trading it is a repeatable routine rather than a prediction of the exact turn. The playbook has four steps — and every entry is opposite the grab, taken only after confirmation. Before the session, mark the obvious pools where stops likely sit: the prior day's high and low, clear swing points, round numbers. You're marking where a grab is likely, not predicting that one will happen — the map comes first, the trade later. My whole routine takes about five minutes with the morning coffee: yesterday's high and low, the two most obvious swings, the nearest round number. When something violent happens at one of those levels later in the day, I already know what I'm looking at. Enter opposite the grab only once something confirms it: the close of the rejection candle, a small CHoCH, or a retrace into the fair value gap (FVG) or order block the snap-back leaves behind. Entering on the poke itself, before the candle closes, is exactly how traders get caught — I treat the close as non-negotiable. I've jumped a mid-candle poke before: it looked perfect for thirty seconds, closed as a genuine breakout, and turned my planned reversal into an instant 15-pip hole. A fair value gap is a small imbalance left behind when price moves so fast that one candle's range doesn't overlap the next. Price often retraces to "fill" this gap before continuing. An order block is the last opposing candle or zone before a strong move — an area where large orders were likely placed, watched as a level of interest on the way back. Place the stop just beyond the grab's extreme — the wick tip — with a small buffer. The obvious level itself is exactly where the next grab aims, so a stop parked on it tends to get collected. If price cleanly breaks back through that extreme, the idea has failed: take the exit. This rule cost me money to learn. I once parked a stop right on an obvious GBP/USD low at 1.2650; a two-second poke to 1.2648 collected it, and the pair closed the day 60 pips higher without me. The stop now goes beyond the wick, every time. Read more: What is a stop-loss order and how to set it Aim at the opposing liquidity zone — a prior obvious high or low — or a fixed risk-to-reward such as 2:1. Scaling out works well here: my habit is to bank half at the first opposing pool and trail the rest, ever since the one time I held everything for the far level and watched most of the move hand itself back. Keep expectations honest, though; not every grab reverses cleanly, which is why the stop matters more than the target. Here's how the four steps look with numbers on the chart. Here's the routine applied to a chart, long and short. The numbers are hypothetical and for illustration only. EUR/USD has an obvious low — sell-side liquidity — at 1.0820. Price spikes down to 1.0812, trips the stops, then prints a candle that closes back above 1.0820 with a long lower wick: a bullish grab. After a confirming shift up — a small CHoCH and a retrace into the FVG — I go long at 1.0828, place the stop just below the wick low at 1.0808 — a risk of about 20 pips — and target the buy-side liquidity near the prior high at 1.0868: roughly 2:1. Trading from the UK, whatever the position makes settles back into my GBP (£) balance at the live rate. If price had instead closed and held below 1.0820 with follow-through, that would have been a genuine breakdown, not a grab — and the trade idea is off. Read more: What are pips in forex and how to calculate their value EUR/USD has an obvious high — buy-side liquidity — at 1.0950. Price spikes to 1.0958, trips the stops, then closes back below 1.0950 with a long upper wick: a bearish grab. After a confirming shift down, I go short at 1.0942, keep the stop just above the wick high at 1.0962 — about 20 pips of risk — and target the sell-side liquidity near the prior low at 1.0902: again roughly 2:1. Marking levels and watching closes by hand works — but the platform can do part of the job for you. Plenty of free and paid indicators for MT4 and MT5 (and TradingView) auto-mark buy-side and sell-side liquidity, draw the previous day's and week's highs and lows, and flag long-wick rejections, so you don't have to eyeball every level. They come under categories like liquidity-level markers, session high/low tools and pin-bar scanners — the category matters more than any specific product. MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are the two most widely used retail trading platforms, offering charting, custom indicators and automated trading for forex and CFDs. Whether a poke actually qualifies as a grab comes down to a short checklist — the operational version of the five signals above: I run one of these level-marking indicators myself, purely as a time-saver. What it has never done is confirm a reversal for me — it shows where liquidity probably sits and where a wick was rejected, and the decision still comes down to the close and the checklist above. Whenever I see a "liquidity grab indicator" promising ready-made entries, I close the tab: if the poke-and-snap-back is real, you can see it on a bare chart with the prior day's high and low drawn on. Tools make the spotting easier; they don't make the traps disappear. The same concept that sharpens your entries sets traps of its own. Three catch most traders — and I've paid the tuition on each of them at least once. Inducement (sometimes written IDM) is a minor pool of liquidity deliberately left as bait to lure traders in before the real grab. The logic runs like this: an obvious minor high inside a range tempts breakout buyers and early entries; that minor liquidity is taken first — the inducement — and the orders it triggers fund the push to the major level, where the real grab happens. Inducement (IDM) is a minor liquidity pool left as bait to draw traders into the market before price runs the major level behind it. This is why you can read the structure "correctly", enter on what looks like confirmation, and still get grabbed — you took the bait, not the setup. My own tuition fee: I bought the break of a minor high at 1.0860, was stopped in the push down to the major level at 1.0820 — the actual grab — and then watched a rally of roughly 40 pips leave without me. That trade is why I now ask one question before every entry: which liquidity has already been taken, and which is still waiting? The fix is patience: identify the inducement level first and wait for the major liquidity to be taken before committing. The safest entries tend to come after the obvious bait is already gone. Keep it honest, though — inducement is an interpretive SMC idea, often clearest in hindsight; use it to slow yourself down, not to claim certainty. Not every grab reverses. Sometimes the "grab" is a genuine breakout: price closes and holds beyond the level with follow-through, and the reversal never comes — in SMC terms, it was a BOS, not a grab. Like the time I faded the same EUR/USD breakout twice in one afternoon and paid roughly 35 pips for the privilege — some breaks are just breaks. Read more: Breakout trading strategy in forex: how to trade successfully You'll know you were wrong early. Either the candle accepts the new level — it closes and stays beyond — or your stop beyond the wick is cleanly broken. Take the loss and move on; adding to it turns a routine stop-out into a real drawdown. Three rules keep the damage small: never park stops at the obvious level (that's where the next grab aims), wait for the candle close before acting, and don't force a reversal trade onto a real break — if it holds beyond the level, stand aside. Grabs live in the fastest, most volatile seconds of a session. Spreads widen and slippage rises in exactly those moments, so your fill, your stop and your target can all end up worse than the chart suggested. Read more: What is slippage and how to avoid it in trading Trade every "grab" you see and those costs stack — spread, slippage, commission — until they quietly erode the edge, even on setups that win. The account bleeds through fees long before it bleeds through losses. My own worst stretch was 11 grab trades in one week — 7 of them winners — and the account still finished slightly down once the opening spreads and slippage were counted. Since then I cap myself at the two or three cleanest setups a week and glance at the live spread before every single entry. The fix: treat each grab as one trade inside a probabilistic plan. Risk a small fixed percentage per trade (1–2% is common), be selective — quality over quantity — and factor the spread and likely slippage into the risk-to-reward before you enter. Read more: 10 Forex risk management tips every trader should know Liquidity grabs are areas in the market where a large number of buy or sell orders were triggered. These typically occur at key levels such as the highs and lows of the previous day, week, and month. Liquidity grabs occur from one candlestick having a quick reaction at a key liquidity level. Liquidity sweeps occur when price falls below a liquidity level and comes back up. However, liquidity sweeps can occur over several candles instead of just one like a liquidity grab. Not every level will result in a liquidity grab — sometimes price just breaks and continues. Don't place stops at obvious highs and lows, wait for confirmation of a reversal, and only take high-probability setups with multiple confirmation factors. Spot an area where price briefly distorts beyond a predefined level or order block; treat that grab as a signal that clustered stop-loss orders were triggered, then wait for a reversal confirmation before entering in the opposite direction, with your stop just beyond the wick. It can be either — it depends on which side is grabbed. A grab of sell-side liquidity below a low is read as bullish, while a grab of buy-side liquidity above a high is read as bearish; context and the prevailing trend decide which to favour. Grabs appear on every timeframe but are cleaner on higher ones. Many traders set their bias on the 1H or 4H chart and time the entry on the 5m or 15m, while scalpers work the lowest timeframes. A liquidity grab is price briefly running the obvious stops above a high or below a low, then snapping back — a single-candle footprint of where the orders were, not a crystal ball. The routine that makes it useful is simple: mark the obvious levels, read the five signals, wait for a confirmed rejection, then trade the reaction opposite the poke — while respecting the three traps: the inducement bait, the grab that turns out to be a real break, and the hidden costs of fast conditions. In my experience the edge here isn't seeing more grabs — it's patience and stop placement. Wait for the level to be run and rejected before acting, and never park your stop where everyone else's sits. Do those two things consistently and you're trading the trap instead of feeding it. 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.

The fog of war is once again obscuring the situation in the Middle East, as the US and Iran continue to exchange real fire and not so veiled threats against one another. Official statements regarding transit through the Strait of Hormuz are as contradictory as ever, while negotiators from both sides attempt to salvage some form of agreement even though diplomacy looks increasingly futile. Many market participants will be bored of the conflict by now, particularly those dealing with oil contracts, which shot up around 4% early this morning amid fresh reports of Iranian drone strikes targeting a number of Gulf states. Nothing too extreme as of yet, but the Brent Crude benchmark is back up to $78 per barrel, while WTI contracts have risen to $73. Despite the drama, Japanese and Korean stock markets have been relatively stable so far today as more news comes in. Precious metals on the other hand are not looking so hot, with gold opening with a minor gap to the downside and falling to around $4,075 per ounce at the time of writing, while silver lost the better part of a dollar to sink under $59 per ounce. Bitcoin meanwhile has not succumbed to the same fear, edging higher to $64,000 per coin and affording the wider cryptocurrency sphere some much needed breathing room. The economic calendar will get busy almost immediately this week. On Tuesday, all eyes will turn to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which will publish the June CPI report, offering the latest inflation reading from the United States. On the face of it, current predictions may seem a little odd, with the headline month-over-month figure expected to dive into negative territory at -0.1%, meaning that prices in fact went down in June. The reason for the sudden plunge in prices is of course linked to the collapse in crude oil over the past few weeks as the Iran crisis cooled down. Higher energy costs can rapidly translate to higher consumer prices, as observed in the March, April and May inflation data, but such pressures can dissipate just as quickly once the price per barrel returns to normal. A more useful metric, particularly given the wild price swings in energy prices over the last few months, is the core inflation rate, which excludes such volatile components. June core inflation is the figure to watch on Tuesday, which is in fact expected to rise to 0.3% from 0.2% in May, while the year-over-year figure is predicted to remain at 2.9%. Investors will be reaching for the nearest bottle of champagne if the actual figures come in any lower, because as it stands the Fed absolutely cannot allow inflation to go any higher and everyone knows it. Chairman Kevin Warsh has made it quite clear that the committee will increase interest rates on the dollar if necessary and markets are predicting at least one rate hike before the end of the year. Speaking of Warsh, the newly appointed head of the Federal Reserve will deliver his first semi-annual monetary policy testimony starting on Tuesday and likely the following day as well. Although the incoming Chairman has barely had a chance to warm his seat, ascending to the throne just two months ago, members of the Senate Banking Committee will no doubt grill the newcomer for answers as to why inflation remains at 4% and what Warsh intends to do about it. Not the most enviable of places to be. The aforementioned CPI report and Kevin Warsh testimony may be the biggest events of the week, but there is plenty more for traders to chew on. Wednesday completes the US inflation picture with the latest PPI reading, which, just like its consumer-oriented counterpart, is expected to fall precipitously to just 0.2% from 1.1% the prior month. North of the border, the Bank of Canada will come to a decision on interest rates on the Canadian dollar, which will in all likelihood result in a hold at 2.25%. UK growth figures arrive on Thursday, as do US retail sales, while Friday offers the latest Eurozone CPI data, followed by Michigan Consumer Sentiment later in the day. But wait, there’s more. The earnings calendar kicks into gear this week, starting with the major banks on Tuesday, with JP Morgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Goldman Sachs (GS), Wells Fargo (WFC) and Citigroup (C) all reporting. The banking sector remains partially in focus the following day with Morgan Stanley (MS) and BlackRock (BLK), but attentions will then shift back towards the tech sector with the latest report from ASML. Semiconductors remain on the menu on Thursday as the spotlight shifts to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to close out the week. #IRAN #CPI #FED

Have you ever spotted the perfect trade setup, only to miss it because you popped off to make a coffee or dared to get a decent night's sleep? It happens more often than most traders like to admit. Many people think they have to sit glued to their charts waiting for the market to reach the right price, but that's simply not the case. Pending orders solve exactly that problem by allowing your platform to do the waiting for you. A pending order is an instruction to open a trade automatically when the market reaches a price you choose in advance, rather than entering immediately at the current market price. Whether you're waiting to buy a dip with a Buy Limit, sell at resistance with a Sell Limit, or catch a breakout using a Buy Stop or Sell Stop, pending orders help you plan your trades instead of chasing them. In this guide, I'll explain what pending orders are, the different types available, how they work, how to place them on platforms such as MT4 and MT5, how long they remain active, and when they make the most sense to use. Once you understand them, you'll wonder why you ever spent so much time staring at charts. A pending order tells your broker to open a trade only when the market reaches a price you have selected, rather than executing immediately at the current market price. It allows you to plan your entry in advance without constantly monitoring the markets and comes in four main types: Buy Limit, Sell Limit, Buy Stop, and Sell Stop. Ready to put your trading plan into action? A pending order is an instruction you give your broker to open a trade automatically when the market reaches a price you have chosen in advance, rather than executing immediately at the current market price. Unlike a market order, which is filled as soon as you click Buy or Sell, a pending order waits patiently until your chosen conditions are met. Read more: Types of forex orders: A complete beginner’s guide In forex trading, pending orders are one of the simplest ways to remove the temptation of making impulsive decisions. Instead of chasing the market, you decide exactly where you want to enter, place the order, and let your trading platform handle the rest. Traders use pending orders because markets don't always move in a straight line. You may be waiting for the price to pull back before buying, or you may want to enter only after a key resistance level has been broken. Rather than sitting in front of your charts for hours, you can set your preferred entry in advance and carry on with your day. For example, imagine EUR/USD is trading at 1.1500, but your analysis suggests it offers better value around 1.1475. Instead of buying immediately, you can place a Buy Limit order at 1.1475. If the market falls to your chosen price, the trade opens automatically. A pending order lets the market come to you instead of you chasing the market — and good trading is usually about patience and preparation rather than reacting emotionally to every price movement. A pending order works by waiting for the market to reach a price that you have chosen in advance. Instead of opening a trade immediately, you decide the type of order, set the trigger price, choose how long the order should remain active, and let your trading platform monitor the market for you. Here's how it works: On MT4 and MT5, placing a pending order is straightforward. From the order ticket, simply change the execution type from Market Execution to Pending Order, then choose the appropriate order type, enter your trigger price, and confirm the order. The platform takes care of the rest. One important point to remember is that a pending order is not a guarantee that a trade will open. The market must actually reach your specified price before anything happens. If the price never gets there, your order simply remains inactive until it expires, or you cancel it. It's also worth knowing that stop-type pending orders, such as Buy Stops and Sell Stops, can occasionally experience slippage during fast-moving markets or price gaps. In those situations, the trade may open at the next available price rather than your exact trigger level. While this doesn't happen every day, it's a normal part of trading volatile markets. Read more: What is slippage and how to avoid it in trading A pending order acts like an instruction you've left with your broker: "Only enter this trade if the market reaches this price." That's one of the reasons experienced traders often prefer planning their entries in advance instead of making split-second decisions when prices are moving quickly. In forex trading, there are four main types of pending orders that every beginner should understand: Buy Limit, Sell Limit, Buy Stop, and Sell Stop. Some trading platforms also offer two more advanced variations called Buy Stop Limit and Sell Stop Limit, although these are typically used by more experienced traders. The simple rule is easy to remember: A Buy Limit is used when you believe the market will temporarily fall before continuing higher. Instead of buying at today's price, you instruct your broker to buy only if the market drops to your chosen level. For example, if EUR/USD is trading at 1.1600 but your analysis suggests strong support around 1.1575, you could place a Buy Limit at 1.1575 and wait for the market to come to you. A Sell Limit works in the opposite direction. You place the order above the current market price because you expect the market to rise into resistance before turning lower. This order is popular with traders who like selling rallies rather than chasing prices after they've already started falling. A Buy Stop is used when you expect the market to continue rising after breaking an important resistance level. Instead of trying to predict the breakout, you simply instruct your platform to buy once the breakout actually happens. This helps avoid entering too early and allows the market to confirm your trading idea before you're involved. A Sell Stop is the bearish equivalent of a Buy Stop. You place the order below the current market price so that your trade opens only if support breaks and downward momentum begins. Many trend-following traders use Sell Stops to enter strong bearish moves rather than guessing when a decline might start. A Buy Stop Limit combines two order types into one. Once the stop price is reached, it creates a Buy Limit order rather than opening the trade immediately. This advanced order gives traders greater control over their entry price after a breakout, although it also increases the chance that the trade is never filled. A Sell Stop Limit works in the same way but for short trades. After the stop price is triggered, a Sell Limit order is placed instead of entering the market instantly. These advanced order types are available on some trading platforms but are generally better suited to experienced traders who understand how different execution methods behave in fast-moving markets. As a general rule, if you're just starting out, mastering the four standard pending orders — Buy Limit, Sell Limit, Buy Stop, and Sell Stop — will cover almost every trading situation you're likely to encounter. Once you're comfortable with those, you can explore the more advanced stop-limit variations if your trading strategy requires them. Sometimes it's easier to understand pending orders by seeing them in action. The example below uses hypothetical prices purely to illustrate how a pending order works in a real trading scenario. Example: USD/JPY is currently trading at 135.80, with a well-established resistance level sitting around 136.00. After analysing the chart, you believe that if the price breaks above 136.00, bullish momentum is likely to continue. Rather than buying immediately, you place a Buy Stop order at 136.00. This approach allows you to wait for the market to confirm your trading idea instead of trying to predict the breakout before it happens. Read more: What Is a Forex Currency Pair and How It Works in Forex Personally, I'd choose a Buy Stop when I want the market to prove that buyers are in control by breaking above resistance. If, on the other hand, I believed the market would dip before moving higher, I'd be more inclined to use a Buy Limit to try and enter at a better price. Neither approach is right or wrong — it simply depends on what the chart is telling you. The key takeaway is that pending orders allow you to prepare your trade in advance. Instead of reacting emotionally when prices start moving quickly, you've already decided exactly where you want to enter and under what conditions. That's a much calmer, and usually much more disciplined, way to trade. Placing a pending order on MT4 or MT5 is a quick five-step process. Once you've done it a couple of times, it becomes second nature and allows you to plan trades in advance rather than rushing into the market at the last minute. Open your trading platform and choose the currency pair you want to trade, such as EUR/USD, GBP/USD, or USD/JPY. Then open a new order window where you'll enter your trading instructions. Before going any further, it's worth taking one last look at your chart to make sure your planned entry still matches your analysis. In the order window, change the execution type from Market Execution to Pending Order. Instead of opening a trade immediately, the platform will now wait until the market reaches the price you've specified. This simple change is what allows your trade to be automated. Next, choose the type of pending order that matches your trading idea. Choosing the correct order type is important because each one is designed for a different market scenario. Enter the exact price at which you want your trade to activate. If you're using a stop-limit order, you'll also need to specify the limit price that follows the initial trigger. Many traders also take this opportunity to add a stop-loss and take-profit level so their risk management is already in place before the trade opens. Read more: What is a stop-loss order and how to set it Finally, choose how long you want the order to remain active. You might select Good-Til-Cancelled (GTC), allow it to expire at the end of the trading day, or set a specific expiry date and time. Once you're happy with everything, click Place (or Confirm, depending on your platform), and your pending order will appear in the terminal, waiting for the market to reach your chosen price. One of the biggest advantages of pending orders is that they aren't set in stone. Until the order has been triggered, you can modify it whenever you like. If market conditions change or your analysis evolves, you can adjust the entry price, update the expiry date, or amend any attached stop-loss and take-profit levels. If your trading idea is no longer valid, you can simply delete the order altogether. I regularly tweak pending orders if the market develops differently from what I originally expected. There's no prize for sticking with an outdated trading idea just because you've already placed an order. Flexibility is part of good trade management. Once the market reaches your trigger price and the order executes, it becomes a live position. From that point onward, it behaves exactly like any other open trade and can be managed using your normal risk management strategy. This is one area where trading terminology can confuse beginners. A pending order in trading has nothing to do with a payment or purchase being "pending". Instead, it simply refers to an order that is waiting for the market to reach your chosen price before it becomes an active trade. The good news is that you decide how long a pending order remains active. When placing the order, your trading platform allows you to choose an expiry option that matches your trading plan. Choosing the right expiry is more important than many new traders realise. Markets can change quickly, and a setup that looked attractive on Monday may be completely invalid by Thursday. Personally, I rarely leave every pending order as Good-Til-Cancelled without thinking about it. If I'm trading around an economic announcement or a short-term chart pattern, I'll often give the order a sensible expiry, so it doesn't unexpectedly trigger days later when the market conditions have completely changed. Your expiry setting is another part of your trading plan. It ensures your orders only remain active while your original trading idea is still valid — and it helps prevent stale orders from executing long after your setup has disappeared, keeping your trading more disciplined and better aligned with your analysis. Pending orders are a planning tool that offers several clear advantages, but they also come with a few limitations. Like any trading tool, they work best when they're used as part of a well-thought-out trading plan rather than as a shortcut to better results. Automates your entries: One of the biggest benefits is that you don't need to be sitting in front of your trading platform all day. Once you've placed your pending order, the platform monitors the market for you and executes the trade if your chosen price is reached. This is especially useful if you trade around work, family commitments, or different time zones. More precise entry prices: Pending orders allow you to wait for the exact price that fits your trading strategy rather than settling for whatever the market is offering at that moment. Better entries can often lead to improved risk-to-reward opportunities, provided your analysis is correct. Built-in discipline and risk management: Planning your trade before emotions take over is one of the hallmarks of consistent trading. By deciding your entry, stop-loss and take-profit levels in advance, you're less likely to make impulsive decisions when prices start moving quickly. No need to watch the screen constantly: Markets don't stop moving just because you've gone to lunch or switched your laptop off for the evening. Pending orders allow you to step away from your charts without worrying that you'll miss every opportunity. I often find this helps reduce the temptation to overtrade as well. Read more: 10 Signs of Overtrading and How to Avoid It Ideal for trading specific strategies: Whether you're buying a pullback with a Limit order or waiting for a confirmed breakout with a Stop order, pending orders fit naturally into many popular trading strategies. Instead of reacting to every market move, you simply wait for your predefined conditions to be met. May never fill if price doesn't reach your level: There's no guarantee that the market will ever trade at your chosen price. If it doesn't, your order simply remains inactive until it expires, or you cancel it. While this can sometimes feel frustrating, it's often better than forcing a trade that doesn't meet your plan. Stop orders can still experience slippage: During periods of high volatility or after major economic announcements, Stop orders may execute at the next available market price rather than your exact trigger level. This is a normal feature of fast-moving markets and is something every trader should understand before using them. A stale order can trigger on outdated analysis: Markets evolve constantly. An order that made perfect sense yesterday may no longer be valid after fresh economic data, a central bank announcement, or a significant technical breakout. That's why reviewing your pending orders regularly is an important habit. Requires clear support and resistance levels: Pending orders aren't random guesses. They work best when they're based on logical price levels supported by technical or fundamental analysis. Placing orders at arbitrary prices without a clear reason usually leads to inconsistent results. Can create a false sense of automation: Although pending orders automate your entry, they don't automate good decision-making. You still need a trading plan, sensible risk management, and the discipline to review or cancel orders if market conditions change. Ultimately, pending orders are designed to help you trade more methodically. They won't turn every trade into a winner, but they can help remove emotion, improve consistency, and ensure you're entering the market on your own terms rather than reacting in the heat of the moment. A pending order is an instruction to your broker to open a trade automatically when the market reaches a price you set in advance, rather than at the current market price. It allows you to plan your entry ahead of time without having to watch the market continuously. The four main pending order types are Buy Limit, Sell Limit, Buy Stop, and Sell Stop. Traders typically use Limit orders when buying a pullback or selling a rally, while Stop orders are commonly used to enter trades after a breakout has been confirmed. Some platforms also offer the more advanced Buy Stop Limit and Sell Stop Limit order types. A limit order aims to achieve a better price by buying below or selling above the current market price, although it may never execute if the market doesn't reach that level. A stop order, on the other hand, is designed to enter a trade once momentum has already begun, making it popular for breakout strategies where speed of entry is often more important than securing the very best price. A pending order lasts for as long as you choose when placing it. Most trading platforms allow you to select Good-Til-Cancelled (GTC), Today, Specified, or Specified Day, giving you full control over when the order expires if it hasn't been triggered. Yes. As long as the order has not been triggered, you can modify the entry price, expiry date, stop-loss, or take-profit settings, or delete the order entirely. Once it becomes a live trade, it is managed like any other open position. A market order is all about speed — it executes immediately at the best available market price. A pending order is about price — it waits until the market reaches the level you've chosen before opening the trade. A pending order may not execute for several reasons. The market might never have reached your chosen price, the order may have expired, your trigger price may have been too close to the current market price and rejected because of your broker's minimum stop or limit distance, or, in the case of a stop-limit order, the market may have gapped past your limit price without filling the order. A pending order allows you to plan a trade in advance and let the market come to you instead of chasing every price movement. Whether you're looking to buy a dip with a Limit order, sell into strength, or trade a breakout using a Stop order, pending orders give you greater control over how and when you enter the market. The real advantage isn't that pending orders magically improve your trading — it's that they encourage preparation. By deciding your entry price, choosing the right order type, setting an appropriate expiry, and thinking about your risk before the market gets there, you're trading with a plan rather than on impulse. After more than a decade of trading, one lesson has stayed with me: the traders who consistently perform well are usually the ones who do the hard work before the trade begins. Pending orders are one of the simplest ways to build that discipline into your routine. Trading "like a professional" isn't about predicting every market move perfectly. It's about preparing for the opportunities that matter, having the patience to wait for them, and letting your trading platform do exactly what you've instructed it to do when the time is right. 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.

Market participants have had a few days to mull it over and have collectively decided to ignore the simmering tensions in the Middle East and instead focus back on the hot trade of the year that is the semiconductor industry. South Korean giant SK Hynix has officially raised $26.5 billion in its listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange and will start trading later today at $149 per share once the US session gets underway. The hype is strong, with demand for the new shares running at seven times the amount made available. All the semiconductor stocks that got hammered earlier in the week subsequently rebound in spectacular fashion once the bout of profit-taking concluded, leaving many companies with a higher valuation than that with which they started the week. Micron (MU), Sandisk (SNDK), Western Digital (WDC), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) all performed admirably, while the sector in general rallied after Micron committed to invest $250 billion in the United States through 2035, as part of a greater strategic push to repatriate chip production back to US soil. Meanwhile, oil prices managed to simmer down to the mid-$70 range yesterday, despite fresh strikes between the two belligerents, as officials around the world lamented the unravelling of the memorandum of understanding and the end of the painstakingly established ceasefire. Funnily enough, the most interesting development from the Federal Reserve this week was not the FOMC minutes from the June 17th meeting, which revealed very little from the suddenly tight-lipped committee, but the release of the names of the experts who will make up the Fed’s new task forces. Chairman Kevin Warsh first announced the five task forces last month, which include communications, balance sheet policy, data, inflation frameworks, and finally productivity and jobs. Several weeks later, we now know who is involved. Some of the more prominent names include Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England, who will form part of the communications task force; Raghuram Rajan, former head of India's central bank, who will join the branch responsible for balance sheet policy; former Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, who will be charged with improving data quality, while the productivity and jobs section has acquired a number of heavy-hitters from across the tech industry. Each task force is set up to operate independently, with the ultimate goal of sharpening the tools available to the Fed and improving monetary governance from here on out. #HYNIX #IRAN #FED 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.