Microscalping rule (minimum hold time)
A microscalping rule is a prop firm condition that restricts profits from very short trades, typically by requiring a minimum holding time or by capping the share of profit that may come from trades shorter than a stated number of seconds. It targets strategies whose results depend on fills that a live market would not reproduce.
Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026
Forms the rule takes
- A minimum holding time per trade, below which a trade's profit is not counted.
- A cap on the share of total profit that may come from trades shorter than a threshold.
- A review clause under which the firm may void trades judged to exploit simulated fills or latency.
- The threshold, the scope (evaluation, funded or both) and the consequence differ by firm and change over time.
Why firms use it
Many evaluation and some funded accounts are simulated. A strategy that enters and exits within a few seconds can profit from details of the simulated fill engine, such as fills at the touch or instant execution at a quoted price, that a live exchange queue would not give. A minimum hold time filters out the part of a record most likely to come from those details. The rule also reflects the firm's own cost of copying trades to a live market, where very short trades are the hardest to replicate.
Checking your own record
Sort trades by holding time and compute the share of net profit from trades below the firm's threshold. If a large share of profit comes from trades of a few seconds, the strategy is exposed both to the rule and to the fill assumptions of its simulation. A record whose short trades roughly break even and whose profit comes from longer holds is not affected in practice, even under a strict rule.
In Senzoukria
The prop firm rule engine does not see the duration of each trade, so a rule on trade duration is listed as not simulated, with that reason, in the presets that include it. The Performance panel gives the material to check it yourself: Average hold and Max hold in its Time section, and a P&L by holding time chart among the time breakdowns while the run's trades are still in memory. The journal stores entry and exit times for each trade, and its CSV export carries them for a finer analysis.
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Frequently asked questions
- Does a microscalping rule forbid scalping?
- Usually not. It targets trades below a very short threshold, typically seconds, not scalping in general. A scalping strategy holding trades for a minute or more is often unaffected; the account terms state the threshold.
- What happens to trades that break the rule?
- Depending on the firm, their profit is removed, the payout is held until the share of short-trade profit falls under the cap, or the account is reviewed. The consequence is part of the rule and should be read before trading.