Scalping means taking small, quick profits from short price moves, usually on 1- to 5-minute charts. It can work, but in a prop challenge it faces three obstacles: trading costs, the temptation to overtrade and rules designed to stop abusive high-frequency patterns.
Costs decide everything
If your target is 5 pips and the spread plus commission costs about 1 pip, a fifth of every win is gone before you start. Scalping works best on the most liquid instruments at their most liquid hours, when spreads are tightest.
A responsible scalping approach
- Trade only the first 60–90 minutes of the London or New York session.
- Use a higher-timeframe bias: scalp only in the 1-hour trend direction.
- Target at least 1.5R after costs, not 0.5R.
- Maximum number of trades per session, for example five.
- Stop after two losses.
What is not allowed
Ultra-high-frequency trading, latency arbitrage and trading patterns that exploit platform delays are not skill and are not allowed. Normal manual scalping is fine, within the five-position limit on new paid accounts.