Scalp, Scalper

Scalping is a trading style built around taking many small, quick trades rather than a few big ones. A scalper might hold a position for only seconds or minutes, aiming to capture a tiny move in price — sometimes just a few cents or a few ticks — before exiting, win or lose.

The logic is that small edges, repeated often, add up. Instead of waiting for a stock to move a dollar, a scalper might try to catch ten cents at a time, but do it many times over the course of a session. This requires fast execution, tight spreads (the gap between the buy and sell price), and low costs, because commissions or slippage that seem trivial on one trade can wipe out profit when repeated hundreds of times.

The nuance that trips people up is that scalping is not just "trading small" — it is a whole approach to risk. Position sizes are often larger than a normal swing trade to make a small price move worthwhile, which means the dollar risk per trade can still be meaningful even though the intended profit target is tiny. It also demands constant attention: a scalper is usually watching the screen tick by tick, not setting an order and walking away.

People also confuse "scalp" as a noun (the strategy) with "scalper" as a label for the trader who uses it habitually. Someone can take one scalp trade without being "a scalper" in the sense of a defined style; the term usually implies this is their primary or repeated approach.