Scalping involves trading to profit from small price changes within the 1 to 15 minutes timeframe with the aim of accumulating as many small profits as possible into a cumulatively large profit. Some traders prefer to trade forex pairs on the 1 Minutes (60 seconds) timeframe where they can capitalize and profit from relatively small price movements of the 1 Minutes chart. Every day has 1440 minutes and total trading minutes of 1170 to extract enormous amounts of pips each day from the forex market.

Why scalp the 1 minute chart?

Limited exposure to risk: The duration of trade on the 1 minute chart from an entry and exit is relatively very short within 5 - 10 or 15 minutes. This brief exposure to the market also reduces the trader's exposure to adverse events and the possibility of assuming more risk.

Minimal profit objective with less emotion: This is very important because traders might consider setting less ambitious profit targets within a 1 minute trading timeframe, compared to 15 minutes or 4hr because 1 minute profit objective is easier to achieve.

Smaller pips in price movement are easier and quicker to obtain: you can sit in front of the chart and easily scout the price movement of a 1 minute chart. For example, a pair will move 5 to 10 pips faster than it is will move 30 pips.

Smaller moves are more frequent than larger ones. Take, for instance, a single price expansion of 50 pips has a lot of back and forth small price movement within it that can amount to more than 100 pips. Even during quiet markets, there are many small movements a scalper can leverage to accumulate profits.

1 minute scalping strategy, therefore, allows for more frequent trades and entries thus requiring quick decision making and execution of the trades.

Indicators that make up the best 1 minute scalping strategy

The best 1 minute scalping strategy uses the candlestick charts in conjunction with 3 technical indicators.

Moving averages

First off, both SMA and EMA are the best indicators for 1 minute scalping.

The Simple Moving Average (SMA) tracks the average closing price of the last number of periods. For example, a 50-day SMA will display the average closing price of 50 trading days, where all of them are given equal weight in the indicator.

The Exponential Moving Average (EMA) is very similar, however, it does differ from the SMA because it gives greater weight to more recent prices, so it is generally quicker to react to the latest changes in the marketplace.

The strategy uses the 50-day exponential moving average (EMA) and 100-day EMA. This is meant to help a trader with trend identification.

If the current price movement is above both exponential moving averages 50 & 100, that is an indication that the currency pair is in an uptrend. If the 50-day EMA crosses above the 100-day EMA, this further validates the uptrend and a setup for a bullish scalp will be highly probable.

Conversely, If the current price movement is below both exponential moving averages 50 & 100, that is an indication that the given currency pair is in a downtrend. If the 50-day EMA crosses below the 100-day EMA, this further validates the downtrend and a setup for a bearish scalp will be highly probable.

Stochastic oscillator

The third indicator is a simple momentum oscillator that measures oversold and overbought price movement within a range of 0 to 100.

The reading above the 80 level means that the pair is overbought and the reading below the 20 level suggests that the pair is oversold.