Scalper

Scalper

 

Scalping is a day trading strategy in the financial markets. It infers earnings profits on small price changes. Typically, scalping
is carried out in a short period of time; fraction of a second to a few minutes. Market activity for scalping can be found almost
any time and there is no need to wait for a signal to be generated or a certain trend to be formed.

There are generally three methods of scalping:

• Market depth scalping-

  It is used to determine the imbalance between the volume of demand and supply that could lead to directional
  insignificant movements.

• Pulse scalping-

  They are impulsive directional movements in the traded instrument due to external markets.

• Hybrid scalping-

  Combines features of the first two methods and is currently used in Protrader.

To open a new Scalper panel, go to
Terminal – Scalper
OR
Click on the Scalper icon in the toolbar ribbon

The top panel of the Scalper consists of the Symbol lookup, trading and Menu buttons.

 

 

Scalper settings can be activated by

Right- clicking within the scalper panel and selecting ‘Settings’

OR

By using the drop- down in the top right corner of the panel

Customize settings according to your trading requirements. The panel comes with the following settings-

1) General

2) Trading

3) Time & Sales

4) Market depth

5) Impulse Indicator

6) Overlay Indicator

1) General-

Here, you can set line types, colours and steps for the horizontal grid that is used in the charting area. In addition, you can also
activate auto center functions for quotes based on Bid, Ask or (Bid + Ask)/ 2.

 

 

2) Trading-

Customize your default trade settings using the following functions

• Cancellation priority – allows setting priority for cancelling orders. Ex. (FIFO, LIFO).
• Replacing priority – allows setting priority for replacing orders. Ex. (FIFO, LIFO).
• Expected position limit – displays quantity in lots which the open position cannot exceed.

Note: Limits can be changed if trading is carried out using hot keys.

• Cancel orders after close position –

  If checked, all pending orders are cancelled after closing the position.

• Cancel orders before open position –

  If checked, on placing a new order, the platform will check for open positions, delete all existing orders before a new
  position is opened.

• Automatically add SL/TP after open position –

  If checked, after opening or editing a trade, SL/TP will be added automatically. If unchecked, the orders can be added
  using Hotkeys.

• Default SL/TP/trailing stops, offset –

  Allows setting the default offset values when placing different types of orders.

• Working quantity –

  There are three different combinations that can be set by users-

• Working qty. – Setting quantity for opening positions.
• Increase qty. – Setting quantity for increasing positions.
• Decrease qty. – Setting quantity for decreasing positions.

Ex: You can set your trading parameters as shown in the following figure

 

 

Order type-

You can choose how you would like to execute orders from this window. You can select ‘Offset’ which is calculated as the minimum
tick size from the price selected. Ex. bid, ask, last.

 

 

Following are some of the key pointers of offset prices-

• If the offset is set to ‘Ask’, for ‘Buy Orders,’the offset price will be calculated from the Ask price by default. If the offset is
  positive, the order will be placed at a higher price than the current Ask price. If the offset is negative, the order will be
  placed at a lower price than the current Ask price.
• By default, offset for ‘Sell orders’ is placed as the Bid price. Here, if the offset is positive, the order will be placed at a lower
  price than the current Bid price and if the offset is negative, the order will be placed at a higher price than the Bid price.

Order Strategies-

Orders can either be placed as ‘limit orders or market orders.’

In the case of market orders, you are also required to place the ‘Maximum slippage value.’

Ex: If you wish to go long in ‘Axis bank’ at the market price, say Rs. 500. If you set the max slippage to 5, the order will get executed
between Rs. 500- 505.

 

 

3) Time & Sales settings-

You can choose from any of the following modes

• Trades – only past trades are shown on the chart
• Trades and Quotes – tick chart and past trades are shown on the chart. If selected, the Quote shift field can be viewed in pixels.

 

 

 

4) Market depth settings-

Permits changing basic settings such as font, colour schemes, size of the bars, width of the vertical bars etc.

 

 

5) Impulse Indicator-

Allows selection of a maximum of three symbols that will be displayed at the top and bottom of the panel. You can also set the
max volume for each of the bars to be displayed individually.

Mode – Allows you to select the display in

• Ticks – based on the number of trades
• Volume – based on traded volumes.
• Time interval (sec) – displays the time interval of the bar or indicator.
• Bar height % - allows setting the size of the vertical bars in percentage from the panel height.

 

 

6) Overlay indicator-

Displays charts for the overlaid indicators.

Overlay shift – indicatesthe distance in pixels for which the next point of the overlay chart will be built.

Price marker – shows price changes in percentage from the beginning of the day.

Right margin % - allows setting the distance from Market depth section at which the overlay chart will be built.

 

 

Trading from the scalper panel-

You can trade from the scalper panel in two ways:

1) Using Hotkeys-

To trade using hotkeys, you have to first define the short- cut keys for the various trade functions from general settings. Once
the short cut keys are defined, activate hotkeys by clicking the ‘hotkeys icon’ in the top right corner of the scalper panel and start
trading using the shortcut keys, it’s that simple.

In the following example, hotkeys for long positions/ close short positions are set to “B”. So, to place fresh long trades or to close
out existing short trades, all you have to do type “B.” Once the order goes through, the S/L, P/L and the trailing stops are
automatically activated based on the limits set in the ‘scalper settings.’

 

 

2) Mouse trading-

To activate mouse trading, click on the ‘mouse icon’ at the top right corner of the scalper panel. You can place one- click trades
directly from the scalper panel by selecting the price and clicking the mouse button.

Initiate LONG POSITIONS by using the left- button on the mouse and create SHORT POSITIONS by clicking on the right mouse button.

To start placing trades,

• Select the price by moving the mouse up and down in the scalper panel and CLICK.
• Go through all the trade info in the order confirmation window.