Stop-hunting absolutely occurs, every day, almost constantly, in every pair.
Stop-hunting may be the most consistent and predictable thing in forex.
Some of it might come from your broker, if you have a dealing-desk broker. But, the vast majority of stop-hunts are launched by the biggest players in the market — the big banks, and the biggest speculative interests.
If you could make your stops totally invisible, they would still get picked off — if you continue to place them at common, obvious price points. That’s because the big players, who have the clout to push prices, go gunning for [B]clusters of stops.[/B] If you “hide” your stop in one of those clusters, you’re going to get picked off along with all the other stops in that cluster.
You can learn to recognize where the “dumb money” is most likely placing their stops, and then place [B]yours[/B] somewhere else. That’s a defensive strategy. Or you can play along with the stop-hunters; you can be one of the hunters, not one of the hunted. That’s an aggressive strategy.
Here’s an article written a few years ago by Boris Schlossberg, when he was Chief Currency Strategist for FXCM:
Stop Hunting With The Big Forex Players
Here’s a portion of one key paragraph from the Schlossberg article which addresses your question directly:
“Although it may have negative connotations to some readers, stop hunting is a legitimate form of trading. It is nothing more than the art of flushing the losing players out of the market. In forex-speak they are known as weak longs or weak shorts. Much like a strong poker player may take out less capable opponents by raising stakes and “buying the pot”, large speculative players (like investment banks, hedge funds and money center banks) like to gun stops in the hope of generating further directional momentum. [B]In fact, the practice is so common in FX that any trader unaware of these price dynamics will probably suffer unnecessary losses.[/B]”
I bolded that last sentence for emphasis.