Micro-scalping means opening and closing positions within seconds, at high frequency or in large size, purely to capture one or two ticks. Held that briefly, the position never carries real market exposure — it is not a view on direction, it is an attempt to harvest favourable simulated fills.
Scalping as a strategy is not banned. What is prohibited is a systematic pattern of ultra-short trades that exist only to extract ticks from the fill engine.
What counts as a violation:
Systematic sub-few-second round trips: repeatedly opening and closing large-volume positions within intervals of under a few seconds.
Tick harvesting: high-frequency entry and exit cycles whose sole purpose is capturing micro-ticks rather than taking a directional position.
No genuine exposure: any pattern in which the account enters and exits so quickly that no meaningful risk is ever carried.
What is allowed:
Fast discretionary scalping with a genuine directional thesis and real risk on the trade = ALLOWED
Cutting a trade in two seconds because it immediately invalidated your setup = ALLOWED
High trade counts, where holding times and outcomes reflect actual market reads = ALLOWED
Occasional very fast round trips within an otherwise normal trading pattern = ALLOWED
How this is assessed:
We review average holding time, trade frequency, position size relative to holding time, and how consistently the pattern repeats across the account's history. Isolated fast trades are normal. A repeating, systematic pattern is not.