Forex Scalping is essentially when a trader gets in and out of the market very quickly.  Most scalping trades last only a few minutes, but some can be as short as a few seconds.

The basic concept behind forex scalping is to grab some quick pips, while limiting yourself to the amount of risk that you have.  Since the trade is not open for very long, there is a should be a limit to how much of a loss a trader is going to have.

Most scalpers like to go for at most 5-10 pips in profit.

For those that are brand new to forex trading, you may be wondering why in the world would anybody trade the forex market, just to get 5-10 pips a trade?

While this may not seem like a lot, it does add up.  You have to remember if a trader is playing with full lots, chances are each pip is worth $10 a pip (depending on which currency pair). So if a trade nets 5 pips, the trader, just made himself $50, which certainly isn't bad for just a few minutes of work.

Some forex scalpers also trade a lot more than just one full lot.  There are many traders that scalp by playing 100 full lots at a time.  If you do the math, that's $1000 a pip they are making on each trade.

I know you may be thinking that, there are traders who make hundreds of pips on each profitable trade, so what's the point of short changing yourself to get a measily 5 pips.

Well, for starters many traders who go for hundreds of pips on each trade, most likely are swing traders.  That usually means they have a risk that's somewhat equal to that reward. So, for instance, while they may be trying to trade for 200 pips, their stop loss is probably around 200 pips as well.  This kind of trading requires a lot more patience.

The longer term traders also follow more of the fundamental news that is coming out of the markets. Theyfollow long term patterns as well as economic data and forecasts, not to mention trend following to determine their trading decisions.

With forex scalpers, most don't really care where the trend is going, or what the fundamentals are showing them.  They really only care about the fact there is a good buying selling position at that moment.  Many just look at whether the markets are overbought or oversold for the short term, and take it from there.

Forex scalpers usually range from people who look at charts all day waiting for that perfect position, to get in on a trade. They could also be a person who works a 9-5 job and doesn't have time to follow the price action, so when they get home from work, they look for some opportunities that they could get in and out of a trade in a few minutes. Most of these kind of people are short term traders.

You can learn a lot more about forex scalping by some of the educational courses such as Bird Watching In Lion Country or Peter Bain's Forex Mentor.  Those courses go in depth on all kinds of forex strategies.

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