Hi Dublin,

You are welcome.  The term whale was one chosen by the whale himself. It was probably innocent at the time, but it just stuck.   Just like real world whale watching, you can sit for days with seemingly nothing, then all of sudden something breaks the surface, leaving a tell tale "splash" before disappearing again.  In price, we are trying to spot this "splash", and understand it.  Just like the real world, they are everywhere, and they are nowhere.  

A wash is an intentional penetration of a level to run stops, then the market reverses the other direction.  It can be as really complex like months or years in the making of the formation, or it can be a simple as one bar.  A couple bars that from a small double top, that gets busted, and price closes below it.  Anytime a support/resistance level gets busted, watch and see what happens next.  If it was a bigger player tossing his weight around in his pool, the market will go the other direction. He has essentially has marked his territory.  The wash is confirmed by new lows or highs.

One of the toughest things to understand, and likely the most important is that when the market moves quickly out of a pivot, the whale is not buying or selling to accumulate.  He may be pushing, but he already has his.  He is just letting the rest of us know that we are too late.  So, to study their habits, start at the zoom and go backwards.  They accumulate huge positions while seemingly being invisible.  You won't ever see them on the COT (you know why), but their activity is evident in price.  Spot them, stay out of their way, let them hurt somebody, and be quick enough to grab their tail when they swim back by...with an acceptable risk of course.  The other way is to catch the wash, using a structural stop.  This is preferred but often will not allow a decent Reward/Risk ratio. 

I was taught that going down in time isn't necessary.  And for the most part that is true.   But everybody has their own style, and admittedly I will do it on occasion.  I am guessing though, that for most here, you don't need to go down in time frames.  For instance, on the chart below, when you get those probes the long tailed bar that were preceded by presses that ended up closing mid to low range, you already know that was a wash, the book is cleaned up.  From there you can try and find an entry that works for you with an acceptable risk/reward with a stop above that wash formation.    They aren't structural yet, but if the sighting is a confirmed whale, he will likely not let the market run over him, and you want him protecting you.  I mean important people in the world who hire body guards don't hire scrawny, 5 ft, 98lb freckled faced body guard do they?  No they hire the biggest, most intimidating 6 '5, 300lb guy they can.  Essentially, we are doing the same thing.  Picking our own body guard.  You could go down in time, but doing that will add noise, and the likelihood of trying to cheap out the stop, and by cheating the stop, you have effectively chosen the 98# scrawny guy for protection. Everybody needs to find their own style, whatever that is.

Hope that helps...Take Care