QuoteDislikedWell, my friend. I had seen this until I feel it's common in the charts. They knew what they did, you are right. To englightment someone's life, even though that pattern looks weird. Or contains weird spikes. Yup, we need very tight rules and stop. Who knows, our hard earned money, sweep away just for 5 to 15 seconds movement. That's what a waste. LOL.
PS: I saw that in GU last Friday 30m, you see the long spike doji heading down? that's 42 pips just 1 a blink (1 second). and then get down and down slowly. Harvesting SL?
Harvesting SL is a common broker behavior, mainly after significant news, where they are relatively free to stretch prices for few seconds, eventually in both direction and preferably in the most concentrated SL area first.
I noticed lately NFP price action being used to trigger all these SL. Even when NFP was very good for USD, it was going in the favor of US first, taking SL of trend followers for 50 pips or more, and triggering Stop Orders SO (Sell stop in this case) for a minute, then going to the opposite side taking off all newly opened short trades triggering there SL.
During these price actions, some broker have their station freezing letting you in the impossibility to even try to interfere in a way.
GU price action you mentioned is definitely a Stop harvesting technique for both SL and SO. Imagine yourself having a sell stop order 3 pips below the last day low for example, with 20 pips SL and 50-60 pips target. The price will come and trigger your order, go up and trigger your SL, then slowly go back to your previous entry and continue 50-100 pips in your trade direction. Well your definitely were right in your trade setup and you should have +60 pips in your account, but all that you have is -20!
My advice:
It is not enough to be right.
It is not enough to protect your position with a SL.
You have to be aware of stop hunting if you use fire and forget technique with tight SL.
It is being more and more not only entering a good setup, but about entering it at the good time.
And beware the BDs.
Merry Christmas to all.
Hani