The hidden cost of trading: Why 0.0 pip spreads on the raw account can boost your scalping profit by 20%

It is a familiar story to many traders in Nigeria: you build a strategy, refine entries, follow the economic calendar, respect the risk per trade, and yet the equity curve grows slower than expected. Seldom is the problem your idea in isolation, but more often it is the structure of trading costs that quietly siphons off a share of every winning move.

Cost is not a detail in a market where capital is dear and volatility in local currency and global assets forms part of daily reality, but a core risk factor. To intraday traders and scalpers, the spread is a permanent headwind. Reducing that headwind is one of the few ways to improve performance without taking on more risk.

Raw Accounts with spreads from 0.0 pips do just that: reshape the way trading costs are charged, moving from an opaque, spread-based model to a more transparent, commission-based structure. Over a great number of short-term trades, this could add up to a net performance increase of around 20% for active strategies.

Why trading costs matter more in Nigeria and SSA

Traders in Nigeria, and indeed throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, face conditions that render efficiency particularly important.

Account sizes are often modest enough to begin. Many traders work from mobile devices and laptops at home or the office. At the same time, they deal with global events that move the dollar, oil, gold, and major indices in sharp bursts. In such a market environment, every pip lost to structural costs is a pip that cannot be used for risk or compounding.

Spread-based accounts keep those costs embedded in each quote. A trader may look at 1.2 or 1.5 pips on a major pair and think that is an acceptable cost. Once that spread is paid dozens of times a week across multiple symbols, the impact becomes visible. It is not infrequent to see a strategy that looks profitable on paper underperform in live trading purely because the cost assumptions were just too optimistic.

This divergence between theoretical and real outcomes means more than just an inconvenience to the local traders who face inflation and currency uncertainty. It can make all the difference between trading as a sustainable activity or as a short experiment.

How spreads quietly reshape scalping results

Scalping and short intraday trading are based on the disciplined, repetitive extraction of small portions of market movement. Typical targets might be 5 to 10 pips per trade. On a spread-only model:

• Even a small 1.2 pip spread consumed at entry and exit can remove a big fraction of that move.

• Stop losses have to be further away from entry to account for the spread, which increases monetary risk.

• These break-even points move further away, and the win rate and reward-to-risk ratios become more difficult to maintain.

This effect compounds over hundreds of trades: The trader carries the same market risk, but a big part of the reward goes to pay for the structural friction. The result often shows up as a strategy that wins often yet produces only modest growth.

The mechanics change when the spreads start at 0.0 pips and the cost gets shifted into a fixed commission per lot. The price on the chart more correctly reflects market levels. Breakeven sits closer to entry. The distance between entry, stop, and target aligns better with the design of the system.

For an aggressive intraday strategy, shaving average transaction costs from about 1.2 pips to about 0.2 pips can increase net results as much as 20 percent over time. The trades are the same. Risk parameters remain similar. The difference is that less of each move is sacrificed to spread.

What to expect from an authentic 0.0 raw account?

A “Raw” label is not enough for professionals and serious private traders; what counts is what is behind it.

A true Raw Account combines 0.0 pip starting spreads with:

• Get direct access to deep liquidity in key instruments: major forex pairs, gold, and indices.

• A fixed, transparent commission is simple to model in backtesting and forward testing.

• The execution infrastructure is built for low latency, so orders during active sessions are filled very quickly with minimal slippage.

This is the combination that allows the scalper in Lagos or Port Harcourt to place orders around key levels, news events, or technical patterns with more confidence that the actual fill price will be close to the price seen on the screen.

Take away any one of these elements, and the advantage of narrow spreads is greatly reduced. For example, the combination of tight spreads with weak execution or unclear commissions leaves the trader still guessing at what real costs are.

JustMarkets Raw Account in the context of SSA

JustMarkets, with this professional logic in mind, has developed its Raw Account, which is mainly designed for regions like Nigeria and wider Sub-Saharan Africa.

The account offers the following:

• Spreads as low as 0.0 pips on major instruments, plus a fixed commission per lot, clearly shown.

• Infrastructure is routed via global data centers to support fast, stable order execution during the peak hours of trading.

• The ability to utilize up to 1:3000 leverage allows flexibility in position sizing when used within a controlled risk plan.

• A regulated environment with licenses by FSC Mauritius, FSA Seychelles, and FSCA South Africa puts operations under formal supervision.

For Nigerian traders specializing in XAUUSD, major currency pairs involving the US dollar, and global indices, it means a closer environment to what institutional desks are expecting: precise pricing, clearly shown fees, and infrastructure developed for active trading styles.

How cost clarity changes trader behaviour

The near-zero spread, commission-based structure changes the way traders think about risk and reward. It makes planning more exact, as known commissions and 0.0 pip spreads can be built directly into models and backtests so that live results track expectations more closely. Decision-making also becomes cleaner: instead of fretting over hidden markups, traders focus on execution quality, risk limits, and system improvements. With lower friction on each trade, it’s also easier to hold onto a long-term, process-driven approach and let profits compound across different market cycles.

A structural upgrade for SSA traders

Online trading in Nigeria and across Sub-Saharan Africa has matured; there are more skilled traders and more sophisticated strategies. The next logical step is to match those strategies with cost structures that reinforce performance rather than weaken it. Raw Accounts with spreads from 0.0 pips are among the most important upgrades because they cut unnecessary friction without replacing the need for discipline or analysis. For scalpers and active intraday traders, this shift in pricing can translate to about a 20% improvement in long-term results.

To test the approach, one would want to check how pricing, execution, and regulation are treated through the JustMarkets Raw Account and compare conditions against the demands of their own strategy at the official website.

To start using the JustMarkets Trading app, simply register and download it on your Android or iOS device.