What scalping is
Scalping is the shortest-term style of trading. A scalper usually trades the 1-minute to 5-minute chart, takes anywhere from a handful to dozens of trades a day, and aims for small moves: a few pips on EURUSD or a dollar or two on gold. Positions rarely last more than a few minutes, and the scalper is usually flat by the end of the session.
| Style | Holding time | Typical target | Trades a day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scalping | Seconds to minutes | 2 to 10 pips | Many |
| Day trading | Minutes to hours | 10 to 50 pips | A few |
| Swing trading | Days to weeks | 50 to several hundred pips | A few a week |
Why costs decide everything
Every trade pays the spread, and on a commission account a fee as well. Those costs are the same whether you aim for 5 pips or 50, so the smaller the target, the bigger the share they take. With a 0.8-pip spread and $7 commission per lot, a 1-lot trade costs $15, or 1.5 pips. On a 5-pip target with a 5-pip stop, you win $35 and lose $65, so you need to win 65% of trades just to break even.
| Target and stop (pips) | Net win | Net loss | Break-even win rate | Costs as share of the target |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 / 3 | $15 | $45 | 75.0% | 50% |
| 5 / 5 | $35 | $65 | 65.0% | 30% |
| 10 / 10 | $85 | $115 | 57.5% | 15% |
| 20 / 20 | $185 | $215 | 53.8% | 8% |
| 50 / 50 | $485 | $515 | 51.5% | 3% |
At 50 pips the costs barely matter. At 3 pips they take half the target. That's why serious scalpers trade the pairs and hours with the tightest spreads, and why slippage of even half a pip changes the numbers.
The best time to scalp in IST
- The London open: 12:30 IST in the British summer and 13:30 IST in winter. Volume jumps and spreads tighten on the euro and the pound.
- The London–New York overlap: 17:30 – 21:30 IST in summer and 18:30 – 22:30 IST in winter, the busiest stretch of the day for the major pairs and gold.
- Avoid: the hour around the daily rollover, when spreads widen, the Asian session on euro and pound pairs, and the minutes around big releases. Check forex news today before every session.
The forex market hours clock shows which sessions are open right now.
How scalper traders work
- Session breakout: mark the Asian session's high and low, and trade the break at the London open with a stop on the other side of the range.
- Pullback in a trend: take the direction from the 15-minute chart and enter on 1-minute pullbacks to a moving average or a broken level.
- Range trading: fade the edges of a clear intraday range, with a tight stop beyond it, and stop when the range breaks.
Whichever method you use, the habits that matter are the same: a fixed set of rules, a daily loss limit after which you stop, the same risk on every trade, and a record of every trade. A scalper takes so many trades that a small leak, such as moving stops or trading out of boredom, adds up fast. Trading discipline covers the routines.
Prop firms and scalping
Most prop firms allow scalping, but several limit how short a trade can be or ban certain kinds of fast trading. For example, GFT removes profit from trades held under 2 minutes when it pays a funded account, and Maven doesn't allow high-frequency trading or tick scalping. Read the firm's rules on minimum holding time, news trading and EAs before you scalp a challenge. Our rule pages for GFT and Maven have the details, and prop firms compared covers nine firms.
A tight daily loss limit also hurts scalpers: ten small losses in a row can hit a 3% limit before lunch. Work out the room with the drawdown calculator.
Scalping from India
For residents, the legal route is currency futures and options on NSE, through a SEBI-registered broker; trading forex with overseas online brokers isn't allowed. On NSE, rupee pairs such as USDINR trade from 9:00 to 17:00 IST and EURUSD, GBPUSD and USDJPY contracts until 19:30 IST, so the London open falls inside both, and the start of the London–New York overlap falls inside the cross-currency hours. A USDINR futures lot moves ₹2.50 per tick of ₹0.0025, and on NSE you pay brokerage and exchange charges on every order, so run the same cost check before you scalp it. See USDINR live price and the guide to forex trading in India.