People often ask my why we are always looking for “lows to be swept”. The reality is we are not always looking for lows to be swept, its just that the market tends to range most of the time and trend far less and in ranging markets, we are looking for liquidity sweeps (like sweeps of the lows and highs). In trending markets, we expect lows NOT to get swept, as momentum is strong and key swing points are often defended. The question you need to ask yourself: Is this current move up off of our lows (or down from our highs) 1) impulsive (trending) or 2) corrective (ranging). In the former case, we expect lows (or highs) to be defended as an impulsive move is basically another word for a “trending” move and the origin of a trending move is typically not revisited (until/unless a correction of a larger degree occurs). In the latter case, we expect lows (or highs) to be swept as a corrective move is basically another word for a “ranging” move and the origin of a ranging move is typically a target as the market seeks liquidity in an environment that lacks the momentum of a trending move. For example, looking at the chart below, we have a series of strong, momentum fueled moves to the downside, and we can see that the origin of each of those moves was never revisited. Meanwhile, following the last impulsive move down, we can see that momentum has shifted to "neutral" and we have now entered a choppy/corrective/ranging environment with multiple liquidity sweeps of non-impulsive moves in both directions. Within this ranging environment, we can see that the move up off of our lows has been very grindy/choppy and we are building up liquidity via a series of marginal higher lows, all while trading below the origin of our last impulsive move down. This is similar to the choppy/corrective move up (left most red arrow region) that also followed our last impulsive move down and preceded the next leg lower. So until/unless the origin of our last impulse gets breached (which would then imply that we are seeing a counter-trend correction of a larger degree), we simply assume a continuation of the prevailing trend, which is down.