Quote from goldenarm:
People that say scalping does not work have no clue. I can consistently scalp any fast moving stock. Today I traded GS exclusively for 100-300 share lots and made $800 net after commissions.
The trick is to buy on the bid on the pullbacks and sell into the up moves. Never, ever pay the offers. My average scalping profit is anywhere from 10 cents to 50 cents. When I'm wrong I lose 3 to 10 cents. I'm usually right with my entry points about 60% of the time and I'm super quick to take my losses and try again. The average length of a trade is anywhere from 10 seconds to a few minutes. Therefore, your charts should be 1 or 3 minute tick charts.
You need to be lightning quick on your keyboard and trade on a platform like Lightspeed or Anvil. All of the other trading platforms are too slow to scalp successfully. You don't need the New York Open Book. All you need to see are the prints and the Level 2 screen. Charts are only necessary if you're looking to make a trend play or need to see areas of potential support and resistance. I'd also have the SPY chart up because this will influence whether you should scalp with a long bias or a short bias.
It takes many, many hours of experience to learn how to develop a "feel" for a fast moving stock. You have to be in tune with the ebb and flow, or the rhythm of the stock. Right now, my favorite scalping stocks are GS and MON. But I can scalp anything with good volume and multi point intra-day moves. I prefer to scalp listed stocks since the Nasdaq stocks tend to be a bit too noisy to accurately read the tape. This is due to the many buy/sell programs that seem to infest the Nasdaq stocks.
Scalping is a consistently profitable way to trade stocks. I can scalp and be net positive every single day. In today's market, scalping is my bread and butter technique to pay the bills. I also supplement it with support/resistance plays and intra day trend following techniques.
I don't think I'd recommend scalping from home as opposed to an office with T-1 internet. The split second latency between remote trading and office trading can spell the difference between a profitable and an unprofitable entry point.