Criticism Of Forex Scalping.

Now we'll talk about some disadvantages involved in scalping. Scalping is popular, and profitable for some traders, but it is not without its risks. In this section we’ll analyze the scalping strategy and discuss some of its disadvantages so that you can trade with calmer, more reasonable expectations while employing it.

Is it a good idea to scalp in strongly trending markets?

Many traders favor scalping in strongly trending markets. This approach is defended on the basis of the notion that scalpers thrive in volatility, and that trends cause a great deal of volatility creating many trading opportunities. But is this idea justified on the basis of facts and analysis?

Let’s first remember that while scalping, one misplaced, carelessly created trade can wipe out the gains of tens of successful trades in a short time. A scalper needs consistency above everything else. Discipline in trade sizes, take profit, and stop-loss orders, and a degree of skepticism towards arising opportunities are important components of a successful trading strategy. Let’s ask ourselves, then, which kind of markets offer the best conditions for the implementations of these principles? Would scalpers thrive in strongly trending and volatile markets, or quiet, calm markets where activity is subdued and volatility is low? Naturally, the best conditions will be found in the latter. Calmer markets allow us to exploit small fluctuations over a long time with little risk and good profits. Trending markets move rapidly, with widening and contracting spreads, where exiting a position before it reaches its full potential can be dangerous, and maintaining a calm and composed attitude is an additional problem.

We read online that scalping is best in strongly trending, liquid, volatile markets, and some of us wonder why so many people subscribe to these beliefs. This attitude is present either because the traders who write the articles don’t have that many experiences in scalping or because they use scalping strategies on a trend following scheme. The latter approach is not very useful to beginners, however, because they mostly choose the scalping style to make quick profits without worrying much about analysis or strategy.

Brokers Hate Scalpers

Let’s first state that no forex trader will do himself any good by making real, or imagined enemies of brokers. Regulated brokers are monitored by authorities, and most of the firms in the business are legitimate actors with decent practices. There’s no way of trading the market without brokers (or ECN’s, but they are not used very often, and have their own disadvantages). And there’s no logic or merit in demonizing brokers as crooks or thieves. We, as traders, want to trade the markets, and to do that we need the services of firms which are monitored and regulated by the authorities.

In previous sections we have already discussed how brokers hedge against client losses, and noted that a majority of client positions can be netted out against each other without the broker having to commit any funds. In fact, when such matches can be found, the broker does not even need to pass the buy or sell order client to the bank: all that it must do is matching the order with another customer’s opposing order while pocketing the commission, and assuming zero risk. The problem with scalpers arises because their rapid entry/exit orders make the task of hedging hard for forex brokers with slow servers or outdated software. When they can’t do so, they get nervous, become worried that the scalper is trying to manipulate the system (exploiting latency issues, as they are called), and sooner or later terminate the account of the scalping trader.

There are no statistics on the success ratio of scalpers, but there is no reason to assume to their success rate is any different from that of the overall market. Indeed, scalping is a demanding, and somewhat more sophisticated trading style in comparison to day-trading, or swing trading; there is no reason to expect that beginners will do better in scalping in comparison to their performance in these other trading styles.

Emotional Pressures

Scalping is probably not the best choice for a beginning trader. The style demands constant attention, concentration, and diligent adherence to principles. The fact that trades are small-sized and quick means that there is a need to be very methodical about trade sizes especially, because irregular sizes will make us blind while trying to determine the performance of our account, and prevent the achievement of a smooth, regularly rising trading account.

For a real scalper, fear is not the main emotional issue, unlike the case with many other types of traders. Since risk in each trade is usually very small, and it is possible to stop and exit any position without much trouble, there is little danger of the account being wiped-out or greatly reduced as a result of any single trade. Yet, the major emotional issue faced by scalpers is overtrading and agitation.

The scalper must know where to stop, and yet if he’s nervous, he’ll be unable to stop. Overtrading, based on the belief that the next trade will be the successful one “since one’s luck can’t go wrong so often” may quickly erode the account balance of any trader, and it’s especially dangerous for the scalping strategy. It is on the whole a good idea to suspend scalping activity if you’re feeling that the emotional burden of scalping is too much for you at any time. Do not fight yourself, or the market, but stop trading for a while. It is certainly better than losing your wits trying to profit by battling the market, in other words, trying to improve by worsening your condition.

Illusion

Let’s conclude this part by briefly discussing the dangers posed by faulty interpretation of data. Sadly, many beginning scalpers still evaluate their results on the basis of some ethereal concept termed luck. In a string of wins, good luck is thought to be the causal agent, while a strong of losses makes us think that we have no luck on that day. Since many believe that one cannot have bad luck continuously, there’s a tendency to expect profits soon after a string of losses, and vice versa. Since individual results in short term trading are random, there is no justification for this reasoning, and at least as far as mathematics is concerned, a gain or a loss are equally likely even after a string of ten or twenty gains or profits in a raw.

The other issue which traders must grapple with while evaluating their results is the clustering illusion. In this case, traders will see “order” in a string of random data (such as a list of scalping trade results). After seeing a string of, let’s say, five wins, they will begin to assume that this time their strategy makes wins more likely, and in response they will increase trade sizes, with often disastrous results.

In order to achieve profitability and a degree of safety in scalping it is extremely important that consistency in trade sizes be maintained. If you make small profits with ten 1 lot scalps, and occasionally decide to throw in 3, 2 lot trades where you feel you’re doing well, you’re taking the risk of never going beyond breakeven, in the best case scenario. Make sure that you don’t get deluded by luck, or the clustering illusion to randomize your trade sizes. You can instead use methods like the z-score to see if the win-loss streaks of your scalping strategies are any different from random results.