Trendline Liquidity
Stop orders and buy orders clustered above corrective highs in a downtrend (or below corrective lows in an uptrend) — created by failed structural breaks and forming patterns like descending channels
Trendline liquidity is the accumulation of orders above corrective highs (in a downtrend) or below corrective lows (in an uptrend). When price breaks a structural level but fails to continue — barely breaking, immediately retracing — it creates a corrective high. Each corrective high attracts stop losses from short sellers, buy orders from breakout traders, and sell orders from pattern traders expecting a reversal at the trendline. After several cycles, these corrective highs form a descending sequence that looks like a descending channel or wedge. Pattern traders see the pattern and place more orders at the boundaries. The result: a massive concentration of orders at predictable levels. The market eventually sweeps these highs — not to reverse, but to fill orders and fuel the next impulse leg in the trend direction. This is why so many "breakout" trades fail: price breaks above the channel, triggers all the buy orders, and then reverses hard. It was not a breakout — it was a liquidity sweep.
✓How to Recognize
- •Corrective highs forming after failed structural breaks create trendline liquidity
- •Descending channels, wedges, and patterns are maps of where buy orders are clustered
- •The market sweeps these highs to fill orders and fuel the next impulse
- •Failed breakouts from these patterns are often liquidity sweeps, not genuine reversals
⚡How to Avoid
- →Trading breakouts from patterns without checking if the higher timeframe trend supports a reversal
- →Ignoring the quality of structural breaks within the pattern (failed breaks = liquidity creation)
- →Placing stop losses at obvious pattern boundaries where everyone else has theirs
- →Assuming a pattern breakout is genuine without momentum follow-through confirmation