Retail trading is the way most people operate: individual traders with limited capital who make decisions based on technical indicators, visible patterns, and reactions to price movement. Their operations tend to be reactive; they enter when they "see" the signal, after the movement has already started. The problem is not the lack of analysis, but that the retail trader operates with public information and visible structures for everyone, making it predictable within the market.
Institutional trading, on the other hand, is carried out by banks, funds, and large capital that do not react to the price, but rather build it. These institutions operate seeking liquidity, not signals. They need areas where there are many public orders to be able to execute theirs, and that is why they generate movements that seem like breakouts, strong impulses, or sudden drops. What for retail is a confirmation, for the institution is often the moment to induce error and capture liquidity.
Understanding this difference changes the way of reading the chart: it stops being a set of candles and becomes a map of intention. Many movements do not seek continuity, but rather provoke entries and sweep stops before the price moves in the real direction. Being aware of this does not guarantee automatic profits, but it does prevent trading from a place of naivety. The trader who learns to identify institutional intention (the famous manipulation by whales) 🐋 stops chasing the price and starts to observe who has control in each area of the market.