I actually do personally know individuals who worked in the forex divisions of big banks, people I sat through forex and international business classes with. Their days as described by them consisted mainly of putting together swaps for large multinationals with unbalanced currency exposure and hedging out that exposure on the forex market, which is exactly what we studied in the forex and international business classes. They couldn't have cared less about you and your stops, retail traders are so far down on the totem pole of importance to that market that they don't even merit thinking about. Sure, they could have been lying to me and really they spent all day making $10K at a time for the bank taking out stops, but I find that unlikely. I also might have missed the forex class on how to make money taking out retail trader's stops, but again unlikely. Of course that's just an anecdotal account, the real reasons I think this big bank stop hunting conspiracy theory is a bunch of crap are listed in my original response, none of which are addressed by an assertion that you "see it on the charts". I'll add that if this is so blatant and "obvious to see on the charts" you should all be ecstatic because you've found predictable behaviour, and a competent trader can always make money on predictable behavior. There is no conspiracy, the sooner you learn from your failures in trading the sooner you'll be successful. You're only enabling your own continued failure by always looking outward for blame when things don't go your way.
I remember when I first started trading, a guy told me that the institutions are concerned only with taking money from each other...not from a retail traders. He told me this in order to immediately kill the idea that if I were losing, it's because some major player is gunning for me.
I realize that it's not being done unto me specifically. I do realize that I'm not trading enough to move the market. I'm saying that its moved on purpose in what it does to break levels..and as you said taking money from each other is part of it
Banks don't make money by breaking levels. They make money by earning the spread on swaps. Maybe you should intern at a bank so you could see this for yourself.
To Maverick and the other guys in the know... I agree, no way do they care about retail stops... and brokers like oanda are simply hedging their books on the FX market and don't gun for retail stops. But what about large clusters of stops, and barrier options? There is nobody gunning for those? Places like forexlive and IFR markets used to claim so. I have not read them in quite some time, but they would list order info and barrier options and large clusters of stops. They used to say that's how big institutions/hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds like China (big into the barrier options they claimed) could take profit, or get long/short because that's where the liquidity is to do so.
You can ask Martinghoul, I believe he works at a bank or shop in the FX/Rate world. I know years ago the exotics were magnets for liquidity but not sure what role they play in this current environment.
Cool, yeah I was never sure how true this info was, it kinda made sense to me at the time. I won't go bug the guy as I'm fine not knowing as you can't really make a strategy with it anyway, you'll never have this info if it's happening. They were always after the fact "rumors" on these news feeds. So I just continue about my business. If he see's this maybe he'll chime in.
By the way, besides Martinghoul, for newer players in FX, there was a guy who went by the name of 'gammajammer' who used to post on trade2win that worked on an FX desk in London and wrote some articles about "a day in the life of an FX dealer"... insightful but I'm not sure if this is still the way it works now. One thing he was adamant about was staying off small time frame charts in FX, as it's just noise.
If there's any truth in the underlying premise it would be this, as it did occur in the past. And we know that there was manipulation around fixing prices. None of which is really related to retail punters and their stops.
For sure ... certainly; not related to it ... but that's still clearly among the things that effectively help to reinforce the belief that some of the "uninitiated" have that people are gunning for their stops.