A stock trades quietly above support.

Then the level breaks.

Suddenly price drops through several levels in seconds, volume explodes, and traders start saying the same thing:

“They hunted the stops.”

But what actually happened?

In Episode 9 of The Liquidity Game, we investigate what happens when stop orders, aggressive market orders, thin liquidity, forced exits, and momentum collide around obvious price levels.

We break down stop orders, stop-limit orders, trigger prices, liquidity gaps, order-book depth, support and resistance, cascading execution, short covering, forced liquidations, volatility, and why price can accelerate after crossing a widely watched level.

We also examine the idea of the stop hunt itself. Can sophisticated traders anticipate where orders are likely clustered? Is every violent move through support evidence of manipulation? And what can traders actually infer from Level 2, Time & Sales, volume, and price behavior after the break?

The deeper question is:

When price explodes through an obvious level, are traders being hunted or are their own conditional orders helping create the move?

The Liquidity Game — Markets. Risk. Psychology. Execution.

In Episode 8 of The Liquidity Game, we investigate what happens between the price you see and the price you actually receive.

We break down bid-ask spreads, market orders, limit orders, marketable limits, slippage, depth, partial fills, queue priority, adverse selection, price improvement, maker-taker economics, market impact, and implementation shortfall.

Why doesn’t a market order guarantee the displayed ask?

Why can a limit order sit unfilled while trades continue around it?

Why might getting filled on the bid actually be a bad sign?

Why do large orders move through several price levels?

And if trading commissions are zero, is trading really free?

In Episode 7 of The Liquidity Game, we investigate the hidden side of modern market structure: dark pools, alternative trading systems, internalization, and off-exchange trading.

Why would an institution want to trade without showing its full order publicly? What exactly is a dark pool? How is an ATS different from an exchange? Why do wholesalers execute so much retail order flow away from public markets? And what happens when a massive institutional order needs to trade without advertising itself to every trader watching the book?

We break down:

dark pools, ATSs, off-exchange trading, midpoint execution, internalization, block trades, hidden liquidity, trade reporting, market impact, information leakage, fragmentation, price discovery, and the limits of Level 2.

We also examine some of the biggest myths surrounding hidden liquidity:

Does a huge dark-pool print mean an institution is buying? Are dark-pool trades invisible forever? Is off-exchange volume automatically bullish or bearish? Do dark pools exist to manipulate retail traders? Can institutions buy huge positions without moving price? And if Level 2 doesn’t show every buyer and seller, what exactly are traders seeing?

The deeper question is:

How do you understand price discovery when some liquidity is visible before the trade and some only becomes visible after it happens?

The Liquidity Game — Markets. Risk. Psychology. Execution.