Price comes in steps, and the step size shapes every scalp
Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2026 9:39 am
A major pair quotes in increments of a tenth of a pip on most retail feeds, and some institutional venues use a full pip or half-pip step on certain pairs. That minimum increment is the tick size, and it sets the floor for how price can move.
On a coarse grid, price jumps between a handful of discrete levels and spends a long time sitting on each. On a fine grid, it wanders smoothly. A scalper aiming at two pips is working with twenty ticks on one feed and perhaps four on another.
That changes how stops behave, how often they get touched by noise, and how crowded each price level becomes. Orders pile up at the same few prices when the grid is coarse, and queues form.
Moving a strategy to a different feed without checking the tick size can change its behaviour more than any parameter tweak would.
Has the tick size of a feed ever made a strategy behave differently?
On a coarse grid, price jumps between a handful of discrete levels and spends a long time sitting on each. On a fine grid, it wanders smoothly. A scalper aiming at two pips is working with twenty ticks on one feed and perhaps four on another.
That changes how stops behave, how often they get touched by noise, and how crowded each price level becomes. Orders pile up at the same few prices when the grid is coarse, and queues form.
Moving a strategy to a different feed without checking the tick size can change its behaviour more than any parameter tweak would.
Has the tick size of a feed ever made a strategy behave differently?