Switching to raw pricing feels like a free upgrade until you log thirty days properly. My first month was a lesson in honesty: commission is visible; bad timing and revenge clicks are still the real cost centre. Raw did not make me smarter — it made the maths harder to romanticise.
What I tracked daily without fail:
- Spread + commission in R per closed scalp.
- Rejects or odd fills if any.
- Session buckets — London vs overlap vs late NY — so “average cost” was not a mushy blended lie.
If you have done a first-month cost log on IC raw (or similar), what number surprised you most — average R cost, or how often you traded when you should not have?
I also compared those thirty days to the prior month on the old account type so the upgrade was measured, not felt. Feeling cheaper is not the same as being cheaper after your own click habits.
