Sell-Side Liquidity (SSL)

Sell-side liquidity is the cluster of sell orders below a low. Protective stops of longs sit there, and so do breakdown shorts. A push under the low trades into them. A close back above the low is a sweep that caught the stops and trapped the breakdown. A close that holds below is a breakdown that used those stops as fuel. Equal lows are the clean picture. The prior day's low and the session low are the levels intraday traders actually share. The term is the mirror of buy-side liquidity and has the same limit: obviousness is a proxy for resting orders, not a measurement of them.

Mark the lows before they are tested. When price undercuts one, classify the event by the close and by the follow-through, not by the fact of the undercut. A one-tick pierce on a one-minute chart is not the same object as a drive through the weekly low on rising volume. Match the pool to the timeframe of the trade. A scalp can use the session low. A swing trade that uses a one-minute equal low as "SSL" has borrowed a small level for a large idea.

The reversal long is a pierce of the lows and a close back above, at a higher-timeframe support. Stop beyond the sweep low. Target the range high or the nearest buy-side pool. This is a failed breakdown. It wants evidence of failure, a reclaim, not merely a touch of the level you circled.

The continuation short is a close below the lows that is accepted. The sell stops have been triggered and price is not coming back. Shorting the first tick under the low, before acceptance, confuses the breakdown with the sweep. Wait for the market to show it can stay outside.

Buying every poke under a low in a waterfall. Sell-side liquidity gets consumed on the way to lower sell-side liquidity. Also marking SSL under a low that has already been swept. The stops that were there have been filled. A new pool forms at the new low, not at the old one.

A stop run and a genuine breakdown look the same in the first seconds. The distinction is the close and the retest, which means the pattern is clearer after the entry you wished you had taken. That is acceptable. Chasing the wick is how the concept is misused. And on a gap through the low there may be no trade at the stops at all. The market skipped the pool.