Where the stops sit
Resting orders nobody can see — and why obvious prices collect them.
Explain what a resting order is and why stop orders, which nobody outside a broker can see, still cluster in predictable places: just beyond swing highs and lows, band edges, round numbers and equal highs or lows. Use buy-side and sell-side liquidity as the precise, modest terms they are — descriptions of where orders plausibly rest — and set a tolerance for "equal" before looking, so the shape can be checked rather than spotted.
5 chapters · 6 quiz questions · 10 terms · included with a plan
Otus, on this module
Every liquidity video starts from one true observation and then runs a long way past it. The true part: stops are not scattered at random, because everyone was taught to put them in the same place. This module is the true part, stated carefully. The running comes later, and we will be checking its papers.
The chapters
Each module ends with you doing what it taught — a written answer Otus reads, and a quiz.
- 01 · Read
Orders that wait, and where they wait
Resting orders, triggered stops, and the rule that makes stops cluster.
- 02 · Watch
Watch: Where Your Stop Actually Sits
One minute, then the step ticks itself.
- 03 · Read
Equal highs and equal lows
The most obvious prices on a chart, and why "equal" needs a number.
- 04 · Watch
Watch: Equal Highs
One minute, then the step ticks itself.
- 05 · Write
In your own words
Two sentences. Otus reads them.
- 06 · Quiz
Six questions
A wrong answer still pays. It costs the combo, not the XP.
10 terms this module defines
The same definitions Otus uses in the lessons. All of them are in the trading glossary.
- Resting order
- An order that waits at a set price rather than trading immediately — a limit order, or a stop order before it triggers. The resting orders near price are what liquidity means.
- Unseen stops
- Stop orders are generally held by the broker or exchange and shown to nobody. Every claim about where stops sit is inference from how stops are taught, not observation.
- Stop cluster
- Many stop orders gathered in one narrow strip, because traders following the same rule — beyond the level, not on it — place them beyond the same obvious price.
- Buy-side liquidity
- Orders that would buy if price rose to them: the stops of short positions and breakout buy stops, plausibly resting above highs.
- Sell-side liquidity
- Orders that would sell if price fell to them: the stops of long positions and breakdown sell stops, plausibly resting below lows.
- Liquidity pool
- A strip where many resting orders are thought to gather — usually just beyond an obvious high or low. A label for an inference, not a measured quantity.
- Obvious price
- A price everyone can see without drawing anything: a swing high or low, a round number, the prior day's or the session's extreme. Obvious prices collect stops because stops follow them.
- Equal highs
- Two or more swing highs at practically the same price, within a tolerance fixed in advance, with no higher high between them. A record of repeated turns, and the most plausible strip of buy-side liquidity.
- Equal lows
- Two or more swing lows at practically the same price, within a tolerance fixed in advance. The mirror of equal highs, with sell-side liquidity plausibly below.
- Tolerance for "equal"
- How close two highs or lows must be to count as equal, set before looking and ideally in ATR. Without it, "equal" stretches to fit whatever the reader hopes to find.
Finishing it pays 150 XP and 3 keys on the game board, on top of what each chapter earns. XP measures what you learned — never what you earned. How levels work.
Education only. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell anything; the school teaches reading charts, never predictions.
Start with lesson one.
The first modules, Otus as your tutor and the game board are free. No card needed.