Scalping is not a faster version of investing. It is a different business with different economics, and costs decide the outcome more often than calls do.
Scalping means taking a position and closing it minutes or hours later, aiming to capture a small price move. Repeated many times, small edges are supposed to accumulate into a meaningful return.
That is the theory. The arithmetic is less forgiving.
Costs are the dominant variable
Every trade pays brokerage, exchange transaction charges, GST on those charges, STT on the sell side of equity trades, stamp duty, and slippage — the gap between the price you saw and the price you got.
A strategy that captures an average of 0.1% per trade and pays 0.06% in round-trip costs is not capturing 0.1%. It is capturing 0.04%, and it needs to be right far more often than it is wrong to stay ahead of that. Increase trade frequency and you multiply the costs alongside the edge.
This is why a scalping strategy has to be modelled after costs before it is allowed to trade live. A backtest that ignores them is measuring something that does not exist.
Liquidity is not optional
Scalping only works in instruments where the bid-offer spread is narrow and size can be entered and exited without moving the price. In a thin instrument, the act of trading changes the price against you, and the edge you thought you had is consumed by your own order.
That constraint eliminates most of the market. It is a feature.
What SEBI's data says
SEBI has published repeated studies of individual traders in the equity derivatives segment. The consistent finding is that the large majority lose money over a financial year, and that losses concentrate among the most active traders.
If you are considering short-term trading, the base rate is the most important number available to you, and it is not favourable. Assume you are in the majority unless you have specific evidence otherwise.
Where it fits
Short-term trading belongs in a portfolio, if at all, as a capped satellite allocation funded from money you could lose in full without changing your plans. It is not a core holding, it is not a substitute for a diversified portfolio, and it does not become one by being run well.
This article is educational. It is not advice and not a recommendation. Trading in leveraged derivatives can lose more than the capital committed.