ICP This 15-minute candle is pretty brutal. With 3.3x volume, it directly smashed through the lower edge of an area covering nearly 20 consecutive 5-minute ranges. Aggressive turnover discrepancy is -52.4%, and the buy/sell ratio is 0.31—selling pressure hardly gave longs any breathing room.
But interestingly, the OI (open interest) side is different: 15m -0.69%, 1h -0.34%, and even the nominal change is shrinking. Price is down while positioning is also down—this doesn’t look like fresh shorts coming in to smash the market. It’s more like longs themselves couldn’t hold up anymore and are unwinding leverage and exiting via stop-losses. The OI abnormal percentile is 98.6%, and the whole-pool abnormal is #3, which suggests this move is quite extreme within the pool. The funding rate is still in a high percentile recently too—those crowded longs earlier really got too full.
Honestly, this kind of structure is not a particularly comfortable place to chase shorts. Bear momentum is real, but the positioning is getting cleared—not being accumulated. After breaking below the lower edge of the range, if OI keeps falling and price stops bleeding, then you should be careful: it could be the tail-end of a shakeout.
First, see whether this 5m candle can reclaim that level. If it can’t, there may still be a stretch of liquidity below that needs to be swept.
But interestingly, the OI (open interest) side is different: 15m -0.69%, 1h -0.34%, and even the nominal change is shrinking. Price is down while positioning is also down—this doesn’t look like fresh shorts coming in to smash the market. It’s more like longs themselves couldn’t hold up anymore and are unwinding leverage and exiting via stop-losses. The OI abnormal percentile is 98.6%, and the whole-pool abnormal is #3, which suggests this move is quite extreme within the pool. The funding rate is still in a high percentile recently too—those crowded longs earlier really got too full.
Honestly, this kind of structure is not a particularly comfortable place to chase shorts. Bear momentum is real, but the positioning is getting cleared—not being accumulated. After breaking below the lower edge of the range, if OI keeps falling and price stops bleeding, then you should be careful: it could be the tail-end of a shakeout.
First, see whether this 5m candle can reclaim that level. If it can’t, there may still be a stretch of liquidity below that needs to be swept.