[iamwalex]

I'm not sure what I'm missing, but it seems that scalping is incredibly profitable with enough capital.
Start with 3k
Open an account with Interactive Brokers.
If you find a stock that oscillates about .1 percent, you'll be making a minimum of a dollar profit every time you trade after spending about two dollars for a round trip purchase.
Let's say you trade once every minute, that pretty much guarantees you sixty dollars each hour and usually it's way more than that.
Imagine the same oscillations except with more base capital. 30k equals at least six hundred dollars each hour...that's 5.1k in a day. My parent's didn't make that much in a month.

So why don't many people scalp? When does it fail?

[SIUYA]

http://www.traderslaboratory.com/for...epts-8296.html

[Marko23]

Originally Posted by iamwalex »

I'm not sure what I'm missing, but it seems that scalping is incredibly profitable with enough capital.
Start with 3k
Open an account with Interactive Brokers...

I suggest, you do just that and open another account with 200K for paper trades with IB.

Then you oscillate with your paper account to answer your question.
It can be easily refilled and you will need it.

[subterfuge]

Im not at all sure what you mean.
Trades dont always move into profit.
Can you illustrate what you mean with a chart??

[electroniclocal]

Originally Posted by iamwalex »

So why don't many people scalp? When does it fail?

They don't know how.

[Tradewinds]

One reason could be the ratio of trading fees to profit. I've practice traded at times when my account showed a "profit", but because I had so many trades, the fees were bigger than the profit. My cash balance was negative. It's important to look at your cash balance if you are going to scalp.

The other potential problem that comes to mind is the issue of successful fills. The order may not always fill at your needed price on either side of the trade.

The third issue is the problem of minimizing your profits, when they could have been larger. That is only a problem if you get one big looser. But it's easier to wipe out a small profit very quickly, than a large profit.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not against taking small profits as they happen.

The appeal to scalping is the attempt to assure profits, and put your fears at ease. That's understandable, and not necessarily a bad objective. But the market rewards risk, not safety. Please don't interpret that as a rationale to go start taking wild risks.

I'm not against scalping as NEEDED, I'm not sure that it's a viable strategy to scalp on every single trade.

I think it's important to avoid the issue of severely limiting your gain on a trade by scalping, when you could have made a little more money. You should know the market you are trading well enough to be able to reasonably guess when price is going to continue in the same direction.

[Yorkid]

Originally Posted by electroniclocal »

They don't know how.

IS there a "how" to know? If so, why aren't there a lot more scalping daytraders?

[summerwind25]

It puzzles me too. BUT, the downside of scalping is covering your spread, not staying in the more profitable moves and dealing with ranging markets. It is also very intense - no problem if you want to be that active and you win a lot more than you lose.

You read a lot about 90% or whatever ratio of new traders failing. We also see many people saying that you shouldn't scalp but trade on daily/hourly or whatever chart. Hmmm. I say if it works for you, stick with it.

I've spent a fair bit of time with 50 tick and 100 tick charts attempting do do what you describe. I have to tell you that for me its been more profitable to deal on a longer time frame. Not that much longer - 15 min, 5 min and 3 min charts for strategy and 1 min for in and out decisions.

The reason I changed from ticks to time is that my platform won't carry through support and resistance lines on tick charts.