What it is
A range-low sweep and reclaim is a stop-hunt reversal. Price pushes below an obvious low where resting stop-losses and long liquidations sit, fills those orders, and then closes back above the level in the same bar. The mechanism is simple: the move below the low was made of forced selling, not new sellers. Once that forced flow is spent, there is nobody left to push, and price snaps back into the range. The mirror setup (a push above a range high that closes back below it) is traded short.
The method goes by many names in trading videos. We name it by what actually happens: a sweep of liquidity below a level, then a reclaim of that level.
Rules
- Market / timeframe: BTC or ETH perpetuals, 15-minute or 1-hour candles. Works best when the level is visible to everyone (a 24-hour low, a session low, a round number).
- Level: the lowest low of the previous 96 bars on 15m (24 hours) or 24 bars on 1h.
- Entry: a candle whose low trades below the level but whose close is back above it, and which closes green. Enter at that candle's close.
- Stop: the low of the sweep candle. If the stop is closer than 0.15% of price, skip the trade (the sweep was too shallow to mean anything).
- Target / exit: 2R (twice the stop distance). If neither stop nor target is hit within 48 bars on 15m (24 on 1h), close at market.
- Position size: risk a fixed fraction per trade (the table below uses 1% of account per trade). On a 100x account that is a 0.5% price move away from liquidation, so the stop must sit well inside that distance.
Chart example
Evidence
Our own backtest, Coinbase BTC-USD and ETH-USD candles, 2025-10-19 to 2026-10-19 (one year), no fees, no slippage, one position at a time. Buy-and-hold over the same year: BTC −23%, ETH −38%.
| Market / TF | Trades | Win rate | Avg R | Profit factor | Net R | Max DD (R) | Return @1% risk | Max DD @1% risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BTC 15m (both sides) | 511 | 37.2% | 0.07R | 1.11 | 34.4R | 21.0R | 34.3% | 19.3% |
| BTC 15m longs only | 267 | 34.1% | −0.02R | 0.98 | −4.1R | 23.0R | −6.4% | 20.8% |
| BTC 15m shorts only | 244 | 40.6% | 0.16R | 1.27 | 38.6R | 12.4R | 43.5% | 11.8% |
| BTC 1h (both sides) | 288 | 38.5% | 0.09R | 1.14 | 25.1R | 16.2R | 25.0% | 15.3% |
| ETH 15m (both sides) | 377 | 40.6% | 0.14R | 1.23 | 51.4R | 23.4R | 61.2% | 21.3% |
| ETH 15m shorts only | 183 | 46.4% | 0.31R | 1.61 | 57.3R | 9.6R | 73.9% | 9.4% |
| ETH 1h (both sides) | 221 | 36.2% | 0.00R | 0.99 | −0.9R | 15.7R | −2.8% | 15.5% |
How to read it: with a 2R target you only need about 34% winners to break even. The raw rule clears that bar on 15m, mostly on the short side, because the test year was a down year and sweeps of range highs failed more reliably than sweeps of lows. The long-only rows are flat to slightly negative. A 21R drawdown at 1% risk is a 19% equity drawdown, which is the price of a 37% win rate.
When it fails
- Trending days. When the market is actually breaking down, the "sweep" is just the first bar of a new leg. The reclaim close is the only filter; without it you are catching knives.
- Levels nobody sees. A low from 96 bars ago that was never retested carries few stops. The edge comes from crowded stops, so prefer levels that were obvious on the chart for hours.
- Fees. 500 trades a year at 0.05% taker fees each way is 0.1% per round trip, and the average stop here is only a few tenths of a percent, so fees alone consume more than the raw edge. On a real exchange this rule needs limit entries or a much tighter filter. On a paper account you can see the raw edge first, then add costs.
- Stop too tight. A sweep candle with a long wick gives a stop that is far from entry; a shallow sweep gives a stop that the next wick clips. The 0.15% minimum exists for that reason.
You can practice this on RektChat's paper desk with a $100,000 seed and real BTC/ETH prices before risking anything.