There is lots of overlap between scalpers and day traders. Low time frames, more unpredictable moves, a need to employ a system that exploits volatility effectively. I only scalp during extremely strong trends, and I don't recommend it for beginners at all.
Currently studying T.A here and it appears that some of the concept that pertains to what type of trader you are is a bit confusing with respect to the risk to reward ratio..
Isn't it that swing trading or day trading who deals with a larger timeframe is prone to a greater risk than those people who are doing scalp trading?
"Day trading" generally means closing trades within the same day. Scalping is even more short term, trading on the 1-minute or 5-minute charts.
So the major distinction is between swing trading (riding trends over days or weeks) and scalping (holding trades for seconds or minutes).
Naturally, swing trading is much riskier in absolute terms (bigger risk per trade) because you need to use much wider stops than with scalping. You can't expect to jump onto a daily trend if your stop losses are, say, 0.1%. You're almost guaranteed to be stopped out in that situation. Such a stop loss would be appropriate for a 1-minute chart scalper though, because he is trying to profit from very tiny price moves.
The downside of scalping is you miss out on most of the gains from trends. Higher time frame traders can just hold for weeks for huge profits, while you're constantly opening and closing for tiny little profits. Plus, low time frames (hourly and below) are very unpredictable, which makes scalping even less profitable.
Or I just misunderstood the concept? As far as I know, trading with a larger timeframe comes with a great risk because of the gap between prices while scalping is the other way around.
That's exactly right. Swing traders are taking way fewer trades with larger potential losses and also much larger potential gains.