Both scalping and intraday trading usually take place on the same day, but the important difference is that day traders open and close fewer positions per day than scalpers. Day traders tend to focus more on broader time trends and on 15-minute, 1-hour, and 4-hour charts to find opportunities. Scalping is a style of trading that specializes in taking advantage of small price changes and making quick profits by reselling. In intraday trading, scalping is a term that designates a strategy aimed at prioritizing obtaining large volumes from small profits.
The automatic and instant execution of orders is crucial for a speculator, so the preferred method is a direct access broker. However, scalping is generally characterized as a trading technique that consists of making short-term trades that last between a few seconds and a few hours. However, a scalper is much more active and places a lot more trades during the day, because they focus on achieving small but repeated profits. Some resellers even use brand graphics and order books to get even more detailed information on price momentum.
Newcomers to scalping should ensure that the trading style fits their personality, as it requires a disciplined approach. Since resellers are confident of taking advantage of short-term volatility and momentum, they should align their active trading hours with those of the best days to trade in the foreign exchange market. The only way to honestly know if scalping or intraday trading is the right method for you is to try both methods. That said, scalping isn't the best trading strategy for newbies; it involves quick decision making, constant control of positions, and frequent rotation.
This is understandable because, in essence, all resellers are intraday traders, but not all intraday investors are. There are hundreds of different technical analysis indicators and thousands of different intraday trading strategies. On the other hand, as the name suggests, intraday traders hold their trades for several hours, but not more than a full day of trading. Scalping techniques aim to obtain incremental profits that can be evaluated at the end of the day, week, or month.
It's not impossible for a currency pair to move up to one hundred pips in a single day, and intraday trading strategies look for those big swings and trends. With scalping, traders quickly make a lot of small profits to minimize risk, which means that, if they're looking for small profits, they can lose big profits.
