Home › Guides › Strategies

Scalping strategy basics: small moves, and why costs matter most

Scalpers aim to catch lots of tiny moves, often holding for seconds or minutes. It looks fast and simple. The part most guides skip is how much of each tiny move the costs eat.

Beginner guide · 8-minute read · Updated 2026-10-21

How scalping works

Scalping means trading very small price moves, many times a day.

• Charts: usually 1-minute, sometimes tick charts or 5-minute.
• Holding time: seconds to a few minutes.
• Targets: small. A few Ticks on futures, a few pips on forex, a few cents on stocks.
• Stops: small too, often close to the entry.

The idea: many small, quick trades instead of a few long ones. For how it differs from regular day trading, see scalping vs day trading.

The cost math most guides skip

Here's the thing.

Every trade has costs: the Spread (the gap between the buy and sell price), Commission, and Slippage (getting filled at a worse price than you wanted).

Those costs are about the same size whether your target is tiny or huge. So the smaller the target, the bigger the share that costs eat.

An example on a forex pair:

Same 1-pip cost. On the scalp, a fifth of the target is gone before price moves at all.

That's why scalpers pay close attention to markets with tight spreads and low costs per trade.

The market it needs

Scalping only fits markets that are:

• Very busy. Lots of buyers and sellers, so orders fill fast at fair prices. Think big index futures like MES or ES, or major forex pairs during busy hours. See Liquidity.
• Cheap to trade. Tight spreads and low commission.
• Moving. Quiet hours give no room for even small targets. Check the market hours tool for the busy sessions.

A thinly traded stock with a wide spread is close to impossible to scalp. The spread alone can be bigger than the target.

Where it fails

• Costs add up. Fifty trades a day times costs is a lot of drag, even when the trades break even before costs.
• Noise. On a 1-minute chart, much of the movement is random. Tight stops get hit by wiggles.
• Speed and stress. Decisions come every few seconds. Tired or upset scalpers make fast mistakes. See revenge trading.
• Overtrading. It's easy to keep clicking. See how to stop overtrading.
• News spikes. A data release can move price many times your stop in one second. Spreads widen right when you need them tight.

The rules a beginner would write down

1. Context first: "Before the session, I mark levels on the 15-minute and 1-hour charts. I only scalp in the direction of the 15-minute trend, at those levels."
2. Entry: "A 1-minute candle body closes past a marked level in the trend's direction. A wick doesn't count."
3. Stop: "Just past the last 1-minute turning point. Never moved further away."
4. Target: "At least 1.5 times my risk after costs. If costs make that impossible, no trade."
5. Size and limit: "About 0.5% risk per trade, because there are more trades. A cap of 10 trades a day. Two losses in a row and I take a 15-minute break. Three losses in the day and I'm done."

The trade cap and the break rule matter as much as the entry.

A worked example in units

An illustration on the micro Nasdaq-100 future (MNQ). Each 0.25 point is $0.50, so 1 point is $2. Check cmegroup.com for current specs.

• A 1-minute body closes past a level. Entry.
• Stop 8 points away. Risk: $16 per contract.
• Round-trip commission and fees: say $1.50 per contract (yours may differ).
• Target 15 points: $30 before costs, about $28.50 after.
• If the stop is hit: about $17.50 lost with costs.
• Risk 0.5% of $10,000 = $50. Size: 50 ÷ 17.50 = 2 contracts.

So after costs, the trade wins about 1.6 times what it risks. Before costs it looked like 1.9. A math example, not a promise. Slippage can make both numbers worse.

Run your own numbers in the futures tick value calculator and the expectancy calculator.

How to practice it on replay

Scalping is hard to practice honestly on replay, because replay feels slower than real time. Here's how to make it closer:

1. In TradingView bar replay, set a 1-minute chart and turn on auto-play at a steady speed. Don't pause to think.
2. Mark levels on the 15-minute chart first.
3. Take only trades that meet your rules. Write each one in a few words as it happens.
4. Subtract your real costs from every trade, win or lose.
5. Log the session in your trading journal: trades taken, trades after the cap, results before and after costs.

Then paper trade it live for a few weeks. Real-time speed is a different test.

Questions