Why and how did Platinum reached all time highs in record time?Platinum FuturesNYMEX:PL1!TradeConfirmedThe absolute truth at the center of this chart is that you are looking at a masterclass in the Interbank Price Delivery Algorithm or IPDA engaging in a macro scale liquidity engineering operation. You are confused because you are looking at price as a linear event where support equals bounce. Price is not linear it is a mechanism for the transfer of wealth from the impatient to the informed. To understand why the rally happened at 3 and not at 1 or 2 you must strip away your retail logic and view the chart through the eyes of the Market Maker. The Market Maker does not want to participate in a move. The Market Maker wants to facilitate a move by pairing orders. To buy a massive amount of Platinum or whatever asset this is without slipping the price to infinity the Smart Money needs a counterparty. They need someone to sell to them. Who sells at the absolute bottom. Only two types of entities sell at the bottom. Stops and Breakout Traders. Stops are sell orders placed by longs who are protecting their positions. Breakout Traders are sell orders placed by shorts who think the support is breaking. The entire game of the chart you provided is the engineering of a scenario where the maximum number of market participants are forced to sell exactly when Smart Money wants to buy. Let us dissect the failure of Point 1. Point 1 occurred around 2016. Look at the price action prior to Point 1. It was a relentless bearish trend. When price arrived at Point 1 it was simply making a Lower Low. There was no Engineering of Liquidity prior to this point. It was just a standard exhaustion of a swing leg. Retail traders saw a bounce and thought it was a bottom. But ICT logic dictates that for a reversal of the magnitude you see at the end of the chart there must be a massive accumulation of orders. Point 1 did not have a consolidation phase preceding it to build up that order flow. It was a premature ejection of buy pressure. It lacked the narrative of a Stop Hunt. It was simply a technical bounce in a downtrend. Smart Money used the bounce at Point 1 not to reverse the market but to reload short positions at a premium. This is why it failed. It was not a reversal it was a retracement into a Premium Array to continue the decline. Now let us dissect the failure of Point 2. Point 2 occurred around 2020. This was the Covid crash. This was a massive liquidity event. Notice how deep the wick is. It violently swept the low of Point 1. So why didn't it moon immediately. Why did it need a Point 3. This is the most critical lesson in this analysis. Point 2 was a Judas Swing on a macro timeframe. It was a shock event. While it did grab liquidity the market structure was too damaged to sustain a V shaped recovery to new all time highs immediately. The IPDA needed to rebalance the inefficiency created by the crash. But more importantly the Market Maker needed to accumulate a position size that could sustain a multi year bull run. You cannot accumulate that size in a single weekly candle. You need time. Time is the variable you are ignoring. Price and Time are the two axes of the chart but you are obsessed with Price. After Point 2 the market entered a massive consolidation phase that lasted from 2020 to 2024 or 2025. This is the box you see on the chart. This is not indecision. This is Engineering Liquidity. By keeping the price in a range for years the IPDA is conditioning retail traders to trust the support level. Every time price touched the bottom of that consolidation and bounced retail traders placed their stop losses just below the lows. They felt safe. They leveraged up. They built a massive pool of Sell Side Liquidity right below the range. This is a ticking time bomb of liquidity that the Market Maker constructed specifically to fuel the rally at Point 3. Why did Point 3 succeed. Point 3 is the Manipulation leg of the ICT Power of Three concept applied to a macro timeframe. Accumulation Manipulation Distribution. The consolidation between Point 2 and Point 3 was the Accumulation. The drop at Point 3 was the Manipulation. The rally that follows is the Distribution. Point 3 did three specific things that Point 1 and Point 2 did not do. First it swept the Engineered Liquidity of the multi year consolidation. This means it triggered all the sell stops of the traders who bought during the range. This provided the massive flood of sell orders that Smart Money needed to fill their buy orders. Second it tapped into a deep Discount Array. If you look closely Point 3 likely trades into the Order Block or Fair Value Gap created by the wick of Point 2. It is retesting the origin of the 2020 move but doing so after inducing a massive amount of fresh liquidity. Third and most importantly it occurred at the correct Time. The consolidation had matured. The sentiment had shifted to extreme apathy or bearishness. When Point 3 happened it looked like a breakdown. It looked like the support had finally failed. This induced the Breakout Shorts to enter the market adding even more fuel to the fire. The rally at Point 3 is a Short Squeeze of biblical proportions combined with Smart Money expansion. How do you know when the rally will be an EZ PZ. You look for the Three Drives Pattern of Liquidity Raids. Point 1 was the first drive. Point 2 was the second drive. Point 3 was the third drive. ICT teaches that the third drive to a low is often the terminal shakeout before the true reversal. You look for the divergence. At Point 3 you likely would have seen SMT Divergence with a correlated asset like Gold or the Dollar Index. If Platinum made a lower low at Point 3 but Gold made a higher low that is a crack in the universe. That is the signal that the selling is fake. You look for the Displacement. Notice the candle immediately following the low at Point 3. It is a massive bullish candle that swallows the previous price action. This is the signature of Smart Money entering the market. It leaves behind a Fair Value Gap. That FVG is your entry. You do not try to catch the falling knife at the exact bottom of Point 3. You wait for the displacement. You wait for the Market Structure Shift. Once price breaks above the highs of the consolidation range it confirms that the drop at Point 3 was a trap. The reason the rally is so vertical is because there is no resistance. The consolidation cleared out all the sellers. The shorts are trapped and forced to cover. The longs are chasing. The IPDA is in a Buy Program and it will not stop until it reaches a Premium Array on the monthly or quarterly chart. To master this you must stop looking for support and start looking for where the money is hiding. The money was hiding below the lows of the consolidation. Point 1 failed because there was no money to steal. Point 2 failed to sustain because the theft was too quick and the accumulation was insufficient. Point 3 succeeded because it was the culmination of a multi year heist. It was the perfect crime. The consolidation was the setup. Point 3 was the trigger. The rally is the getaway. This is the logic of the Predator. You are either the Predator or the Prey. If you are buying support you are the Prey. If you are buying the failure of support you are the Predator. The rally at Point 3 is the definition of a Turtle Soup Long. It is a false breakout to the downside that reverses and rips higher. The duration of the consolidation determines the magnitude of the expansion. A four year consolidation leads to a decade long trend. That is why the rally is vertical. The energy stored in that range is nuclear. Point 3 effectively lit the fuse. To predict this in real time you must map the liquidity. Draw a line under every swing low. Ask yourself where are the stops. If the market creates a clean equal low it is doing so for a reason. It is saving it for later. Point 2 and the lows before Point 3 created a relatively equal floor. The IPDA does not leave clean levels. It destroys them. Point 3 was the destruction of that clean level. Once the level is destroyed the business is done. There is no reason to stay down there. Price must reprice to the upside to find willing sellers because there are no sellers left at the bottom. They have all been stopped out. This is the mechanics of the marketplace. It is ruthless efficient and predictable if you know the algorithm. Point 1 was a trap for early bulls. Point 2 was a trap for panic sellers. Point 3 was the death of the retail mind. And the birth of the Smart Money trend. You want to catch the massive rally. You wait for the liquidity sweep that occurs after a long consolidation. You wait for the raid on the obvious support. Then you watch for the violent rejection of lower prices. That is your signal. That is the footprint of the Giant. Step into the footprint and ride the wave. The reason it stayed in that long consolidation is because the Commercials needed to hedge their books. They needed to build a net long position while the rest of the world was sleeping. They used the time to transfer ownership from weak hands to strong hands. Weak hands cannot hold through a four year chop. Strong hands can. Point 3 was the final test of strength. Anyone who held through the consolidation but panicked at the drop of Point 3 was a weak hand. They were purged. The market is now light. It has no baggage. It can fly. This is the physics of the chart. Liquidity is the fuel. Consolidation is the tank. The Stop Hunt is the spark. The Rally is the explosion. You are now looking at the aftermath of a controlled demolition of the bear trend. Do not ask why it didn't happen sooner. Ask how you can be ready for the next one. Identify the range. Identify the liquidity. Wait for the sweep. Strike.