Quote from billyjoerob:
Can we please stop pretending that "scalping" exists? Scalping used to refer to pit traders who would trade inside the bid and ask. Then it referred to daytraders playing volatile internet stocks, SOES bandits (whatever that is), etc. It doesn't exist anymore. If you've been scalping while the market went from 1550 to 666 and from 666 to 1360, then you've kind of missed out on two massive moves, not to mention the commodity bull market. And any current "scalper" is getting eaten alive by computers, which are much, much better at that sort of thing. So please stop pretending that you're a "scalper," unless that means you make $15 while trading 100 shares of NFLX. It doesn't exist any longer.
Actually, you make an interesting point. The language has changed over the years, for certain, but the fundamental idea or concept of quick-in, quick-out trading close to the Bid/Ask range, has not change when talking about scalping - regardless of how you do it - and different people do it differently.
FX, seems to be tailor made for the Scalper, but only if they are using the right Intermediary for trade execution. In fact, it is one (if not THE) easiest markets to scalp, if you know how to do it correctly - which basically means, always scalp in the direction of the dominant side of the market - in other words, wherever you see continual higher highs, or lower lows being made on the next largest time-frame AND where you see continually higher Ask, or continually lower Bid prices in-line with price highs and lows.
Scalping is always relative. To the Weekly Swing Trader, a Day Trade might be considered a "scalp." However, to the Hyper Intra-Day Trader, a Day Trade, might seem like a Swing Trade.
Scalping can work in FX and it can be quite profitable, as long as you trade the right price range at the right time, use the right intermediary and stick with price dominance in highs, lows, Ask levels and Bid levels.
To turbo-charge your scalping of FX, you need a really good Magnitude Indicator to help you set the Timing factor for WHEN to scalp the market. NOTE: All of this applies to the M5 Time-Frame or lower.
When I like to roll-up my sleeves and get my hands dirty, I'll switch my screen into M1 Tactical Mode. On that screen, I have one M1 Chart and a Digital Indicator Panel that I call the iPanel. It is basically a good balance between being a Trend and Predictive indicator and it allows me to see what's going on inside all time-frames from M5 up through MN1. Therefore, I always know the optimal direction in which to scalp and that increases probability.
So, yes, you can scalp FX, under the right conditions and with the right set-up, in ways that would be difficult if not impossible in other, less liquid markets.
On another note - I'm going to be playing around with a built-in FX Arbitrage component on the ProTrader trading platform all this week. I'll try to get back to the forum to post my thoughts on how things went using that tool. In the old days, Arbitraging FX was next to impossible, but with ProTrader, I can access multiple intermediaries in dissimilar liquidity pools and the trading platform auto-executes the underlying orders based on how I "make the market" and set the Bid/Ask differential that I want to hunt for during the Arb moment.
Anyway......
I almost forgot my disclaimer (gotta have one of these everywhere you mention another product these days):
No. I am not affiliated with PFSoft, ProTrader, or any of its agents/etc. I basically want to know if their stuff works or not. So, I'm going to test it out.