Eyes, wrists and long screen sessions: the physical side of scalping

[FXS London Scalper]

Nobody posts about it until something hurts. Scalping means hours of staring at small candles, fast mouse movements and a lot of sitting still, then sudden bursts of tension.

Some habits that make a real difference for people who trade the London session daily:

Eyes
- Monitor at arm's length, top edge at or slightly below eye level.
- Larger font on order ticket and price ladder. Squinting at a 9pt price is how fat-fingered entries happen.
- The 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Between trades is a natural time.

Wrists and hands
- Hotkeys over mouse clicking where your platform allows it.
- A vertical mouse or trackball if you get forearm ache.
- Keyboard close enough that elbows rest at 90 degrees.

Sitting
- Stand up after every closed trade, even for 30 seconds.
- Hard rule: no trading through a full session without a break. The 09:30–10:00 UK lull is a good one.

Fatigue shows up in your trade log before you notice it in your body. Average hold time gets longer, and so does the delay between signal and entry.

What setup changes helped you most?

[PTScalper]

Nobody posts about it until something hurts. Scalping means hours of staring at small candles, fast mouse movements and a lot of sitting still, then sudden bursts of tension.

Some habits that make a real difference for people who trade the London session daily:

Eyes
- Monitor at arm's length, top edge at or slightly below eye level.
- Larger font on order ticket and price ladder. Squinting at a 9pt price is how fat-fingered entries happen.
- The 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Between trades is a natural time.

Wrists and hands
- Hotkeys over mouse clicking where your platform allows it.
- A vertical mouse or trackball if you get forearm ache.
- Keyboard close enough that elbows rest at 90 degrees.

Sitting
- Stand up after every closed trade, even for 30 seconds.
- Hard rule: no trading through a full session without a break. The 09:30–10:00 UK lull is a good one.

Fatigue shows up in your trade log before you notice it in your body. Average hold time gets longer, and so does the delay between signal and entry.

What setup changes helped you most?

Hi,

thank you for sharing with us this topic.
In most of that you are right for typical intraday trader/scalper.

But for example me i do not have such problems, because most of my trades i do from my mobile phone.
Another advantage of that is that in most cases im out on fresh air or in coffee shop, so i do not watch only to the screen.
It is great for my stress as well, because it lower it.

[FXS Prop Desk]

PTScalper, trading from a phone outdoors is a genuine counterexample to the usual desk advice. It moves the physical risk somewhere else though: small screens and bright light make it easier to misread a price or tap the wrong button. Using preset order sizes and confirming the order ticket before sending are cheap habits that cover the main weakness of a mobile setup.