A swing failure, as we use the phrase in the room, is simple. Price takes out a prior swing high or low and cannot hold the other side. The next candles trade back through the swing. That is on the print. You can point at it with a pencil.
A stop hunt is a story about why that happened: that stops sat beyond the swing, that someone triggered them on purpose, that the market is therefore obliged to run the other way. You cannot point at those stops. You can only infer them, and inference fills journals with certainty the candles did not earn.
We allow the first sentence in homework. We strike the second unless the student labels it as a guess. The distinction matters because the trade location might be the same — fading a failed break — while the sizing and the patience differ. If you believe in a hunt, you want immediate reversal. If you believe in a failed auction, you wait for the reclaim and for the following session not to make a new extension.
AUDUSD printed a clean swing failure against a four-hour supply during a March London session we still keep in the pack. Several students wrote 'stop hunt' in the margin and then felt cheated when price drifted sideways for four hours before the decline. The chart had not promised speed. The story had.
Keep the folklore for the break, if you must. On the page, write what failed, where it reclaimed, and what would put the old swing back in play. That is enough work for one candle.