It is not purely that traders want to stop-out customers in order to derive some perverse pleasure. A lot of it has to do with risk management. Let’s suppose you have a large stop-loss order in EUR/USD and you are the spot trader at Snidely, Whiplash and Company. The definition of a stop-loss is an order that becomes a market order once a certain price is dealt. So if you have an order to buy EUR 500 mln 2 pips above a key technical level, you need to be a buyer at a point when many others in the market are likely to be buyers as well. What can you do? Two things. You can wait for the market to deal at the price ... (full story)