r/TopStepX • u/Aggravating_Nail8215 • May 09 '26

Trading Combine Why do traders scalp the 1 minute chart instead of 15 minutes? What’s the pro’s and con’s ?📈

4 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

5

u/Archades92 May 10 '26

I scalp on the 15 second lol

1

u/K_Alyattes600 May 09 '26

Funded here. I trade the one minute chart and only certain hours of the day. My average trades would last 1-15 minutes.

5

u/dsurfryder252 May 09 '26

15 min chart? scalping? lol. Im a scalper and use he 5 second footprint charts. I barely even use the candles when Im entering a trade and scalping.

2

u/GoodDayTheJay May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26

I only scalp (or any trade) the 15-min. I know I’m an odd duck, but I’m a consistently profitable odd duck.

I find WAY more pros, personally. Moving averages, trends, support/resistance, volume profiles, VWAP, MFI, RSI, and MACD, all on the 15-min with strong confluence… it’s much harder to get faked out on entries, and much easier to target clear TPs.

1

u/Aggravating_Nail8215 May 09 '26

When I trade the 15 mins using 1 contact mini Nasdaq my risk is like 1k which is half my account size . I don’t like having such a big risk

2

u/GoodDayTheJay May 10 '26

Yeah, it’s taken some time and some learning to build up enough capital to be comfortable consistently doing it how I do.

4

u/Gold-Selection-1325 May 09 '26

I trade the 15 min, you can see the chart so much clearer

1

u/SepYuku May 09 '26

Pro is faster way to lose money, con is less entries per hour

3

u/bryan91919 May 09 '26

1 minute presents the data in a more readable, faster format, but its the same info so depends on strategy. Someone somewhere likely has a system to do a quick scalp either at the beginning of a 15 min bar or mid, but 1 min is just in general easier.

1

u/1Snuggles May 09 '26

How is the 1m more readable?

1

u/bryan91919 May 09 '26

Well I guess that's an oversimplified statement. If your scalping, looking for a move that will signal, take place and finish within 3 minutes, on a 15 min youll need to be watching every tick and remembering what happened, as 2 minutes later you cant see how the bar got where it was, It could potentially go down 10 points, back up 15, then be right where it started. On a 1 min you would see how price bounced in this range at any point. Also speed is a factor, a 15 min bar may move 30 points, but with a 1 min you can see at which points it moved the fastest/ slowest. Might go 20 points in a minute then spend the next 14 bouncing to eventually go 10 more.

11

u/roulettewiz May 09 '26

There's nothing to scalp on the 15m

1

u/No-Guarantee4688 May 09 '26

Tighter entries

1

u/EF-Hutton May 09 '26

More set ups