[B]Below is just a post I made which I thought I would place here for safe-keeping, regarding a possible explanation for “stop-hunting”.[/B]
From what I have been reading or trying to understand, the movement of Price, is determined by Order Flow. Imagine a large portion of retail traders all setting their stops just behind a particular support level. If a bank is looking for a great entry point in a downtrend, they can wait for a pull-back and then place orders to get Price to move up to the support level, until it reaches just above the Support Level, where they have Limit Orders waiting to be liquidated by your Stop Orders. Price then resumes its downtrend move, giving the banks a great entry opportunity.
Alternatively, there are various other reasons for stops being “gunned”, or “appearing to be gunned”. This can be observed if for instance, a financial institution has invested in an Options contract, which usually tends to be located at the -00 levels. It has to do with something along the lines of defending Price Action from rising above the Option’s -00 Price Level. If it does, then the Option is defaulted. The issuers of the option can thus save themselves money if they place sufficient orders to move Price just above the -00 level of the Option, rendering it defaulted. To assist them to that effect, “options rumors are issued” and Price is manipulated to form common technical patterns to entice retail traders to help with the move.
In short, there are many reasons for stops “appearing to be gunned”. It is not necessarily the handiwork of a broker, (although it sometimes can be), but it is usually due to the intervention of large institutions and other “big players” to increase their bottom line. They need lots of liquidity to place their orders, which amount to millions of dollars, in a quick, timely, and non-interfering way. When you have a heap of stops clustered at a point, it represents sitting liquidity, which they use to execute their orders. As the stops are liquidated by the Limit Orders of these institutions, what is termed a “Stop-Loss Cascade” occurs, where Price would move upwards trying to discover new liquidity, until the majority of Stops are taken out. Retail traders do not have this problem, since our liquidity is handled by our broker/market maker. [B]This is part of the reason why I do not set my Stop-Loss at the high/low of my extreme CBL candle, as to me, it is a rather obvious place, and thus I have opted to place it a wee bit further out, in hopes that the frequency of my trades being taken out by this practice are reduced. :)[/B]
[B]I am not particularly well-versed in this area, I have only touched the surface of what is a very deep topic in Forex. However, I hope to be enlightened in this area further, as I am quite interested in it. If anybody has any tidbits they wish to add, then feel free to drop me a line. :)[/B]
Switching to the higher time frames will require larger stops, and this will be accounted for my a change in position size to ensure that the risk taken per trade remains at 2%. Fortunately, it will be possible with my account size! Thanks for your encouragement, and good luck in your trading as well!
Thanks for the encouragement, and I hope that maybe one day, I will be able to see your progress in your very own journal. 
I must admit I’m a bit like PerchTird & TimberWolfMk2 - I just can’t ‘see’ the trades easily yet. Sometimes I get up the next day & have another look and think ‘how could I have missed that???’ 
