Being a "small fish" is actually an advantage since you have less capital you need to put to work and thus can more easily get fills and catch the bigger waves generated by the bigger fish institutions like mutual and hedge funds.

The institutions have to hold on for longer periods and can't really "scalp" trades per se given that the bid/ask volume would collapse if they didn't distribute and "average in" slowly overtime to accumulate a position vs. buying or dumping their entire position all at once.