Navigating the Forex Market:
It is very possible that there is a significant segment of speculative traders in the Forex market—be they traders at a bank, a hedge fund, a proprietary trading firm, or just the collective actions of many speculative traders who don’t know each other—who are interpreting charts and acting in the same way, placing large orders that move the market in a certain direction.
For example, this might be done in order to trigger stop-orders that are clustered at a certain level. So, if all these market participants see a recent price top, and they think there are stop-loss orders placed just above this top, then there may be a desire in the market to take out those stops, which would first require buying at market with large size.
This means that the participants would end up with long positions, while also driving price up. Then when the market price reaches the stop-loss orders, these are triggered and drive the price up even farther.
In this last burst of price moving up, the speculators are selling, exiting their long positions at a profit. The market participants that were previously short and had their stop-loss orders above that level are now left without their previous short positions in a market that is not really going up, but more likely to move down again.
Now, even though "everyone" spots these levels, they will probably all have different opinions on what price will do in relation to them, and they all have their own agendas and needs.
For example, say EURUSD is in an uptrend and currently at 1.1980, with an untouched 1.2000 above.
Market Participant A believes this level (1.2000) will hold as resistance and price will move down from there, so Market Participant A sells at 1.1980 with a stop loss at 1.2020.
Market Participant B believes this level will break, and that when it does, price will spike up sharply because all the people with short positions will have placed their stop losses just above 1.2000, and when they are triggered, the buying pressure will drive price up. So Market Participant B buys some now, and places a stop loss at 1.1960
Market participant C is the Galactic Bank of Mars, and has sold binary options to Spaceship Manufacturer XYZ which wants to protect its export income from unfavorable currency movement. The options contract states that if EURUSD moves above 1.2000 before 5:00 PM, then the Galactic Bank of Mars will have to pay Spaceship Manufacturer XYZ a truck load of money.
The proprietary trading desk of the Galactic Bank of Mars is now worried that this will happen, and they estimate it will cost them less to hold price below 1.2000 for a few hours rather than pay the options if price climbs above 1.2000. So, the head trader of the desk tells the guy handling EURUSD that day that he has a budget of X amount of money to spend on holding the EURUSD down by keeping his ask price below 1.1998.
On the other hand, Oil Company ABC is looking to buy a large amount of EURUSD. They are aware that their buy orders would move price a lot higher, way above 1.2000, giving them a worse average price. Their treasury guy speaks to their bank's sales trader, and together they decide that the best strategy is to place limit buy orders a little at a time continuously during the London session priced at 1.1970-1.1980, benefiting from the resistance at 1.2000.
These four Forex market participants will now place orders together with everyone else that has an opinion on EURUSD or that needs to pay for export/import, and their collective orders will determine if the level holds or not. This is like a "tug of war" between sell orders and buy orders.
At some point, the EURUSD guy on the Galactic Bank of Mars desk sells all he has in budget X to protect the level, and the buyers manage to press the rate above 1.2000. At this stage the Galactic Bank of Mars guy is massively short and wants to get out of at least some of that short position, so he buys.
At the same time, all the stop loss orders from everyone else who is short are triggered, plus a bunch of speculators are rushing in to buy, anticipating an up move. Of course, sometimes such levels hold, and sometimes they do not.
Now, supposing a given speculator is better than most others at determining what levels will hold, for how long, and how many pips price will bounce before coming back to break the level; then that trader should profit handsomely. Nonetheless, these levels are there for everyone to see. It's just that everyone acts differently in response to them.