What is Scalp Trader (Scalper)?

A scalp trader, or scalper, is a type of investor that typically enters and exits financial positions very quickly — usually within the span of minutes or seconds — with the goal of generating consistent profits from incremental movements in an asset's price. To accomplish this, scalpers often use high-leveraged trading positions in a derivatives trading environment. Scalpers are often employed by large institutional investment firms, equipped with a suite of tools to help automate many of their trading decisions, and allocated a significant amount of investment capital in order to make their trades worthwhile.