40 Scalpel tips for faster, safer scalping

None of these tips makes trading easy. Fast small-cap scalping carries a significant risk of loss and is very difficult, and many people who try it lose money. What these habits do is remove the avoidable mistakes: the wrong key, the oversized clip, the stop nobody was watching.

Desks and layout

1. Give each desk its own colour. The swatch in a desk's header has eight colours; a coloured desk is easier to find when a toast or callout names its symbol (guide 2.2).
2. Double-click a grip to even out the desks. Drag the grip between two desks to resize them; double-click any grip to make every desk the same width again (guide 2.2).
3. Use the + rail on a wide screen. Four desks show by default; the + rail on the right adds a fifth and a sixth (guide 2.4).
4. Copy a good layout to every desk. Apply-to-all in a desk's header copies its panel layout to all the others (guide 2.3).
5. Free a locked desk by loading the symbol elsewhere. A desk holding a position will not change symbol. Load the same symbol on another desk first, and the first one is free (guide 2.1).
6. Believe the badges. DELAYED means delayed data, NO DATA means nothing has arrived, and STALE means no tick for 12 seconds. Do not trade a desk showing one (guide 2.5).

Keys

7. Press ? for the cheatsheet. It shows your live keymap, with each buy key's preset size (guide 4.3).
8. Pick, then trade. Once you pick a symbol, the cursor leaves the symbol box, so your keys trade straight away. While you are still typing in a symbol box, keys type text and never trade; clicking a desk hands them back (guide 14.3).
9. Know what Esc does. It closes an open window or the suggestion list first. With nothing open, it flattens every position on every desk (guide 4.5).
10. Watch the outline. Keys act on the focused desk. Move it with Left, Right and Tab (guide 14.3).
11. Stop keys work with the market closed. B, Shift+T, Ctrl+Q (Shift+Q on a Mac) and Flatten All still work when the order bar is grey (guide 13.13).
12. Put the keys where your hand is. Click a row in Settings > Hotkeys and press the new chord (guide 11.8).

Hotkeys

Shift+1Buy 100 shShift+2Buy 250 shShift+3Buy 500 shShift+4Buy 1000 shCtrl+ZSell full (bid)Ctrl+XSell half (bid)Ctrl+CSell quarter (bid)

Ctrl+ASell half (ask)Ctrl+SSell half (mid)BStop to breakevenShift+TToggle trailing stopCtrl+QCancel all orders?Toggle cheatsheetEscFlatten / close overlay

Sizing and orders

13. Size by dollar risk. With Risk (Cents), each button is the dollars you lose at the stop, whatever the stock costs (guide 4.2).
14. Read the size line before you press. The dollar figure above each buy button is what that press would put on, live (guide 4.6).
15. Reset the Stop stepper after a wide trade. It changes the saved Risk (Cents) stop for every desk, not just this trade (guide 4.2).
16. The order bar's method sets all four presets. Changing it changes every button to that kind (guide 4.1).
17. Cancel what is left of a partial. A buy that outran the book keeps working at its limit; Ctrl+Q cancels the rest. Sell full and Flatten cancel it for you before they sell (guide 4.4).
18. Sell into strength. Ctrl+A offers half at the ask during a spike; in LIVE it waits for a buyer (guide 4.5).
19. Know your two full exits. In LIVE, Flatten All prices about 1% through the bid to clear in one press; Sell full keeps your sell offset. Neither is refused by a sell that is already working: Scalpel replaces it (guide 4.5).

Stops and targets

20. Drag levels on the chart. Grab the stop or target line, or its tag on the price axis; double-click a line to put it back (guide 5.2).
21. Add a target by dragging. No take-profit? Drag the green + TP handle up from the entry line (guide 5.2).
22. Automate breakeven and trailing. Breakeven at (R) and Start trailing at (R) in Settings > Stops do B and Shift+T for you (guide 5.3).
23. Trail a runner by candle lows. 1-min candle lows gives it room and gets you out on the first lower low (guide 5.3).
24. Keep Scalpel running while you hold. Stops are watched by the app, which is what lets them work in the pre-market. If Scalpel closes or disconnects, nothing is watching (guide 5.1).
25. Keep every held symbol on a desk. A position on no desk has no price to watch, so its stop does nothing (guide 6.2).

Reading the market

26. An iceberg is not a floor. The layers icon means a hidden order is refilling at that price. Replayed, those levels broke more often than ordinary ones (guide 3.2).
27. Respect the gold read. An ask-heavy book, coloured gold, is the one read that held up in replay: price tended to stay capped (guide 3.6).
28. Hear the flow. Tape sound, inspired by Aggr.trade, plays buys high in the right ear and sells low in the left, so a block trade sounds like one (guide 3.4).

Scanner

29. Set the scanner to your criteria. Scalpel follows the small-cap momentum style taught by Ross Cameron of Warrior Trading; its usual criteria map to Price min 2, Price max 20 and Min change % 10 in Settings > Connection. Scalpel is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by him or Warrior Trading (guide 14.6, guide 8.1).
30. Click to load. A scanner row or a scanner toast loads the symbol on a free desk; the small squares on a row send it to a particular desk (guide 8.5).
31. Only open panels talk. Scan alerts come only from panels open on a desk with their bell on (guide 8.2).
32. SHS OUT is never below the float. IBKR does not supply float, so Scalpel shows shares outstanding from SEC filings: a small number is a sure low float (guide 8.4).
33. Gappers starts at 09:30. Before the open, top gainers and volume spikes do the work (guide 8.3).

Intel

34. Set the SEC contact email. Without it, filings, the dilution read and SHS OUT stay off. All of it is free: no paid data feed needed (guide 9.1).
35. Hover a chip. Each card says what it means for your trade first, then the facts (guide 9.5).
36. Let the guard ask twice. After a financing filing or offering headline, the first buy press is held back; press the same buy within 4 seconds to send it (guide 9.7).

SIM, LIVE and review

37. Reset SIM when you want a clean slate. SIM's DAILY P&L and daily loss limit start again at New York midnight on their own; a reset also puts the balance back. Your Analytics journal survives it (guide 6.1).
38. Check the badge, not your memory. The header's MODE picker and Mode in Settings > Trading both switch at once. Real orders go out only while the red LIVE ORDERS badge shows (guide 6.2).
39. Review your hours weekly. NET P&L BY HOUR (ET) in Analytics shows which part of the morning pays you (guide 6.4).
40. Turn the voice off, keep the sounds. With Voice callouts off, every event plays its tone instead (guide 10.1).

Questions

What is the single most important Scalpel habit?

Size every trade by a fixed dollar risk and honour the stop. Risk (Cents) presets and Scalpel's app-monitored stops make that the default, as long as Scalpel stays running and connected.

How do I avoid flattening by accident with Esc?

Know the order: Esc closes an open window or the symbol list first, and flattens only when nothing is open. Press it once to close a list, and do not press it again unless you mean to go flat.

Where do I start if I am new to Scalpel?

Install, connect and practise in SIM with guides 1.1 to 1.7, then follow the one-week SIM plan in guide 14.5.