Chart expectancy lies when fills are ignored. I learned that on pairs that looked clean on M1/M5 but quietly taxed every entry through slippage and spread. My execution journal exists to measure requested price versus fill, by pair and by session — then to demote anything that charts well and bleeds on costs.
I still care about setup quality. I just refuse to grade a strategy on mid prices I never received. A “+1.2R” trade that filled 0.3R worse on entry and exited into widened spread is not the backtest screenshot.
What I log on every scalp (fast fields at the desk):
1. Pair and session tag — e.g. XAUUSD / London open, EURUSD / overlap.
2. Requested entry (limit/stop level) versus actual fill.
3. Spread at click, and again at exit if it mattered.
4. Slippage in the direction that hurts: positive when fill is worse than requested.
5. Planned R multiple versus realized R after costs.
6. One word on liquidity feel: normal, thin, or news-adjacent.
I do not write essays in the moment. Those fields are enough to aggregate later.
Weekly, or every 20–30 trades, I sort by pair and session: average slippage; average spread paid; expectancy after costs — not fantasy expectancy from candle wicks. Win rate is secondary; cost-adjusted expectancy is the gate.
Demotion rules I actually use:
- If a pair/session shows positive chart logic but near-zero or negative expectancy after costs over a meaningful sample, it drops from the A-list. No structure-was-perfect override.
- If slippage clusters around London open on one major while gold stays acceptable on my feed, I keep gold and demote that major for that window.
- If a pair only “works” when I ignore fill quality, it is not an edge. It is a screenshot hobby.
What this changed: I stopped forcing GBPUSD scalps in thin mid-morning pockets where fills were late. I kept XAUUSD in London when structure and fill stats both cleared. I cut size or stood aside when spread at click failed the max gate — logged as a non-trade.
Common trap: optimizing chart entries while execution quality decays. Another: averaging “small” slippage until a month of tuition shows as a flat curve despite a decent win rate.
I also tag news-adjacent and rollover minutes separately. Those rows often explain outliers. Mixed into “normal London,” they either over-punish a good pair or under-punish a bad window.
Process score still matters — rule adherence, setup grade, emotional tag. Execution metrics sit beside them. A high process score on a demoted pair/session does not restore it until cost-adjusted expectancy recovers in live data.
If your journal is only wins, losses, and feelings, add requested versus fill, spread, and session. Compute expectancy after costs. Demote what bleeds. Promote what still pays once the broker’s reality is included. Scalping edge is what survives contact with the order book — not what looks tradable on a paused chart.
- Board index
- All times are UTC
- Delete cookies
- Contact us