Scalpel

About the Scalpel Team

Scalpel is a keyboard-first day-trading cockpit for Interactive Brokers, built and sold by QUITE RIGHT LIMITED, a small software company registered in England and Wales. The guides, blog posts and comparisons on this site are written by the Scalpel Team: the same people who build the app.

Why Scalpel exists

Interactive Brokers is a strong broker for active traders: low costs, good routing and a capable API. Its desktop software, TWS, does everything, which is exactly why it is slow for one specific job: scalping fast-moving small caps from the keyboard, often before the open. Scalpel does that one job. It runs on top of your own IBKR account, so your orders, fills, data and commissions stay with IBKR, and it puts the Level 2 montage, the tape, the chart and hotkey order entry for each symbol on one screen.

What we believe

  • Opinionated beats everything-for-everyone. Scalpel is for long-only scalping of US stocks, pre-market first. No shorting, futures, options, crypto or automation, and none planned.
  • Risk first. Every entry is sized from your stop and your dollar risk at the instant you press, and every position has a stop from the first fill.
  • Stops that work before the open. Exchanges accept limit orders only outside regular hours, so Scalpel watches your stop itself and exits with a limit order flagged for extended hours.
  • No extra bills. Your IBKR data plus free public sources. No paid feeds, no subscription.
  • Honesty about the odds. This style of trading is hard and carries a significant risk of loss. We will never tell you otherwise.

The workflow is inspired by the small-cap momentum style Ross Cameron teaches at Warrior Trading, and the Level 2 montage follows the DAS Trader style. Scalpel is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by Ross Cameron, Warrior Trading, DAS or Interactive Brokers.

How we write

  • Checked against the app. Every guide says which Scalpel version it was checked with and when.
  • Checked against the source. Rules, fees and other platforms' features are checked on the primary source (FINRA, the SEC, Interactive Brokers, the other vendor's own site) on the date given, and linked.
  • Help first. A post about TWS should fix your TWS problem even if you never buy Scalpel. Where another tool is the better choice, we say so.
  • Corrected when wrong. If you spot a mistake, email hello@scalpeltrade.com and we fix it and update the page's date.

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