One of the things I don't do a lot of is scalping. Mainly because I just don't have the time to sit in front of the charts for a hand full of pips at a time. I'd rather be researching or analyzing for the bigger moves. Having said that, I do find it fun at times and the similarities scalping has with sitting in a casino are plenty.
Like playing poker or counting cards in black jack, scalping is waiting for the right time and setup to put money on the line. I've used quite a few strategies/systems/methods in my 10 years of forex trading to scalp. Most of them involved a lot of indicators and were more about quick reflexes. But if you could anticipate and time when to scalp, wouldn't that make things a lot easier?
The charts below show the last scalp of the evening. For this trade, I used the all familiar Gann Square to get an idea on when/where. On the chart are also pivot points. I use pivots quite a bit for scalping mainly because I have an indicator that draws them automatically and it's part of a very simple intraday method I use for short term intraday trades. Also on the chart are some mustard colored cycles lines. I typically start the session with nothing but pivots and the cycle lines and then only look for trades when price rises or falls into the pivots. If price is rising/falling into a cycle line, that's a sign for a decent price reaction. The key is to watch for when price and time meet.
This first chart shows where I entered where price fell into a cycle line near a pivot and Gann grid vertical division line. The exit target is the dashed blue line pivot at/near the red 1x1 line and Gann vertical division line. Price had fallen back into a Gann division line which would be a good add-on signal on a larger time frame. But this pair has a pretty wide spread and even price hit the target, the profit would have been minimal or b/e. So I passed.
Price ran right up to the box, but needed a second push to hit the target. You can also see on the far left where I shorted when price ran right up to a Gan division. The exit was the yellow pivot line. So as you can see, using time and price are an easy way to map out intraday (evening) trades and nail the entries/exits to the minute.
Below are the trades for the day. These were demo trades testing out the platform link to www.myfxbook.com for the FXDD sponsored demo trading contest I've entered for May.
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