Anybody a successful scalper?

David-lee

Recruit
Messages
7
Hello everybody, I understand the concept of scalping but would just like to know whats regarded as a scalp trade, 5pips or lower, 10pips? It just seems that the odds are against you when the spreads and commissions of the various brokers out there are so high for such small profits. It seems that the only way to scalp successfully is to risk more than your potential profit target due to the inbuilt spread which means that if you lose a few trades in a row it could be very difficult to recover your losses? I suppose the main question is does anybody actually scalp trade profitably because I cant seem to figure it out :)?
 
Haven't you try Demo trading with a broker?

Take the time to learn and understand how the forex market works and behave under certain conditions. Watch and sturdy market movements on your screen.
...And there are plenty of absolutely FREE lessons here at the FPA (Military school, Seive Morten weekly & daily analysis, Pharaoh's articles, etc) plus loads of other absolutely FREE forex stuffs too all over the internet.

The person who is perfectly in authority is the great Pharaoh who should be coming to this post any time soon. He is tied up with some ritual...something to do with embalming a holy cat; I think!

And, for heavens sake, take the time to read reviews on forex brokers and stay well away from scammer and possible scammer brokers. Wouldn't want you coming here screaming for help on how to recover your scammed money.

All the best in your forex journey and, ONCE AGAIN, take your time to sturdy and understand what trading the forex is all about before you rush in and sign up with any broker.
 
Haven't you try Demo trading with a broker?

Take the time to learn and understand how the forex market works and behave under certain conditions. Watch and sturdy market movements on your screen.
...And there are plenty of absolutely FREE lessons here at the FPA (Military school, Seive Morten weekly & daily analysis, Pharaoh's articles, etc) plus loads of other absolutely FREE forex stuffs too all over the internet.

The person who is perfectly in authority is the great Pharaoh who should be coming to this post any time soon. He is tied up with some ritual...something to do with embalming a holy cat; I think!

And, for heavens sake, take the time to read reviews on forex brokers and stay well away from scammer and possible scammer brokers. Wouldn't want you coming here screaming for help on how to recover your scammed money.

All the best in your forex journey and, ONCE AGAIN, take your time to sturdy and understand what trading the forex is all about before you rush in and sign up with any broker.


Thanks for the quick reply, Id hate to count up the hours Iv spent studying this stuff, Im sure that can be said for everybody here :) Im trading live with fxcm micro, after reading alot of positive and negative reviews I decided to go with them because they are supposedly an ecn with 1pip commission built into the spread and they offer micro lots. Funny thing is that all the info in the forex beginners bootcamp took me months to figure out, if only i found this website when I was starting out!...

I suppose Im a little confused on the definition of a scalp trade. Sive sometimes mentions possible scalp trades in his daily eur/usd vids. I assume that would be a 20+pip trade?

Then you get others talking about small 5-10pip trades which only last a couple of minutes or more. If your target is 5pips and you have a 2.5pip spread or lower+commission depending on broker, your sl would only be 2.5pips to give a 1-1 risk reward ratio. That means your timing has to be perfect or you need to increase your sl which increases your risk reward.
 
Embalming a holy cat?!?

I'm currently visiting my mummy and she'd be quite vexed if I tried to embalm any of her cats. I think the cats wouldn't like it either.
:p


Definitions of scalping vary, especially among brokers than ban scalping. Some have a minimum pip value. Others have a minimum time to hold trades.

Find a broker that's STP or ECN and check their TOS to make 100% sure they don't have scalping restrictions (hint - if they have scalping restrictions, then they aren't really STP or ECN). Then spend some time on a demo account with them.

Just to confuse things further, some brokers offer both STP/ECN accounts and market maker accounts. Be SURE of the terms for your account type.

Read my article on broker selection. If you want even more due diligence on a brokerage, ask F-Man's 4xAngels.com service. Ask RahmanSL anything you like (except about how to treat cats).
 
"scalp"...hmmmm, according to defination by thesaurus, "the scalp of an enemy cut off as a trophy"...oophhhs...wrong defination! : )

Ok, in a nut shell and right off the top of my head, "scalping for profits" in forex term means opening and then closing a trade or trades for small quick profits. It might take (depending on market movement at that time) fraction of a second. a few seconds or minutes. Basically, you open a trade and then close it immediately when it is in profit.

Example: You open a "Buy" trade on EUR/USD at 1.3674 and as soon as the price goes up to 1.3676 you have made 1 pip profit (i.e after deducting the 2 pips spread charged by your broker) and you close that trade immediately. Hence, you are scalping for profits....though I would refer to it more like "scraping" for profits...you know! Scraping something off the surface of something!

Like I said, learn to be patience and don't get any wild ideas that you can trade and become an immediate millionaire....unless, of course, if you have a usd10million account and take up a >1,000 lot size on a winning position.

It took me more than 11 months of learning to start trading Live, and NOW, MORE THAN 2 YEARS LATER, I AM STILL STUMBLING AROUND AND BLOWING UP ACCOUNT, AFTER ACCOUNT, AND THEN SOME MORE.

...and why do I blow up all those accounts???? That can be summed up with SIX very simple words: GREED, IMPATIENCE, BAD MONEY MANAGEMENT.

GREED for more profits even after attaining over 400% profits in one day.
IMPATIENCE to turn that account into tens & hundreds of thousands in the shortest time possible.
BAD MONEY MANAGEMENT in opening up too many trades for my account to sustain any serious losses.

Take the time to learn and to understand forex, and curb your gambling instinct and you will come out ok in forex!
 
...hmmmm, so no cat then?? Perhaps a cow or a Nile crocodile?? I heard they are rather "holy" too! : )

"...she'd be quite vexed if I tried to embalm any of her cats. I think the cats wouldn't like it either."

Forgot to mention that the trick is to wait until the passing of the cat before carrying out any embalming as I have to agree that a live cat will most definitely not like the procedure, not to mention that it would be rather painful too. : )
 
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Ok thanks, that makes alot more sense now, Im sure il have more questions in the future. I suppose the perfect scalp would catch a thrusting move and close at any sign of a pause or reversal. So there may not actually be a target price but get what you can and exit......


I opened my first demo in Dec 2007, little did I know how much is actually involved in trading. It is really a tough business to be successful in but I love a challenge :)
 
What's "scalping"?? The actual definition doesn't really matter, does it? But generally it's going for very quick profits while allowing for almost no drawdown (the trade going against you very far). There's no hard definition for it though.

But your thread got my attention as I'm about to explore this a bit more. Did a great scalp yesterday picking up 30 pips on a 5 pip SL.

The smaller one's profit and SL levels, the more important it is to have tight spreads and zero/low commissions. As mentioned, make sure your broker that offers that will allow scalping. Many do not as if trades are done too quickly, your gains, if you have them, are the brokers losses as the broker would not have time to pass your trade onto the market or other traders, and like you, brokers don't like to lose money.

To that end, MBTrading has instituted a limit order rebate policy where if you set a limit order that is filled, they will reward you with a rebate that seems to more than cover the commission. This can reduce the trade cost very nicely and might be something for scalpers to look at. But it has to be a limit order not a stop order. (Moderators, I've access to an account with MBT and this is in no way a paid ad or spam... I'd love to see other ECN brokers institute this policy!!)

For me, I'm looking at short term support and resistance levels in which to do scalp reversals with very small SL's. This allows me to take best advantage of MBT's limit order reward, and if it goes well, I hope to do maybe 1/3rd of trades go to SL, 1/3rd to BE, and the other 1/3 go to 2-4x my SL level. If I can do that, I won't need any other strat but..... I have yet to prove it can work.

So I'm wondering if this is something scalpers are already doing successfully, or if perhaps it's not been explored due to spreads being the problem in the past. (It cannot be emphasized enough that tight spreads/commissions are essential to any scalping strat).

Cheers....
 
As I have posted in here somewhere, for the lights of me, I don't see how scalpers can loss money if they stick to being happy with 1% - 3% profits per trading day. All they have to do is to close their computer and call it a day.

To be profitable, take the time to sturdy actual market movements on your screen and only after you get a good idea of what's happening, place your trades accordingly.
Do not/never chase large losing movements as that would make you open up one too many trades which will escalate rather quickly in volatile market which will and can wipe out your account within hours.

The thing that really got me into forex is trying out a Demo account (introduced by one of our Engineers) and making usd5 profits in less than 5 seconds.
Prior to that experience, I have never ever made money that fast in my entire more than half century of life on this third rock from the sun.
 
scalping is the most difficult game since it takes the most self-discipline and control which only comes after years and years of trading. So, the only ones still around are the ones that started with deep pockets or traded on a desk somewhere with someone else's money.
 
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