Cost of holding a scalp 3 minutes vs 30 seconds on XAUUSD

[LondonScalper]

Cost of holding a gold scalp three minutes versus thirty seconds.

On XAUUSD the spread+commission ticket is paid immediately. Extra minutes only help if expectancy improves. My log said many three-minute holds were just thirty-second ideas I refused to close -- giving back edge while gold wiggled through my stop.

What I compare
Same setup family, split by hold bucket: under 60s, 1-3 min, over 3 min. After costs, the long bucket was often worse for my scalp definition. So I tightened time stops on "liquidity grab" tickets and kept longer holds only for a separate continuation tag with different size.

Mixing styles on one chart without tags made gold look random. Separating them made costs honest.

If you scalp gold, have you bucketed results by hold time -- and did it change your exits?

Practical change: default time stop on XAU scalps is short unless the ticket is tagged continuation with a pre-written hold plan. Untagged "see how it goes" holds were the leak. Gold will always offer another tick; your costs already charged you for the ones you took.