Scalping targets small price moves captured over minutes rather than days: high trade frequency, small per-trade profit target, tight stops, and a heavy dependence on execution cost (fees plus slippage) staying low relative to the size of the move being captured, since a scalp's edge is easily erased by cost drag if trading costs eat too much of each small win.
Because the edge per trade is small, scalping strategies are especially sensitive to the honesty of the cost model used to evaluate them. A backtest that under-counts fees or slippage will look dramatically more profitable than the strategy actually is once real trading costs are applied.
zengtrade's fast intraday strategies (5-minute EMA scalp, intraday RSI reversion) sit in this category, evaluated against the same global 15bps round-trip cost model as every other strategy, specifically so a fast strategy's apparent edge can't be an artifact of ignoring the costs that would erode it live.
Educational content, not investment advice. zengtrade is paper-first and non-custodial.