Why price reaches for a level, takes it, and turns — explained without needing to believe anyone is hunting you personally.
A liquidity sweep is what happens when price moves to a level where a lot of stop-loss orders are sitting, triggers them, and then reverses. It looks like a failed breakout. It is usually the opposite — a successful one, just not for the people who got stopped.
Traders are taught to put stops beyond obvious levels: below a swing low, above a swing high, under a round number. That advice is fine in isolation, but everyone gets the same advice. The result is that stop orders pile up in predictable places.
A stop-loss to sell is, mechanically, a market sell order waiting to happen. A cluster of them under a swing low is a pool of guaranteed selling. If you need to buy a large position without pushing the price up against yourself, that pool is exactly where you want to be buying — because someone else's forced selling is your liquidity.
On a chart it is unremarkable, which is part of why it works:
Step 3 is the whole signal. A break that closes beyond the level is a break. A break that pokes through and closes back inside is a sweep. The difference is one number — where the candle closed — and it changes the meaning entirely.
You will see this taught with a lot of vocabulary about institutions and manipulation. Most of it is unfalsifiable, and you do not need any of it. You do not have to believe anyone is hunting you personally. You only have to accept two boring facts:
That is enough to explain the behaviour, and it has the advantage of being testable.