The cost of holding overnight
Lesson 2 of 3 · about 6 minutes
2 questions, each checked the moment you answer it.
6 steps · about 6 minutes
The interactive lesson walks these ideas one screen at a time and checks your answers as you go. The text below covers the same ground for reading.
Positions held past 5pm New York pay or earn swap
At the daily rollover, every open position is charged or credited for the night. The figure is the swap, it is per lot per night, and it exists whether you were watching or not. Like commission, this prices the Standard account: the Islamic swap-free account replaces swap with a flat holding fee on positions held beyond its grace period.
Swap comes from an interest gap
Holding a pair overnight means holding one currency and owing the other, and the two earn different interest. That gap, plus the broker's rollover terms, is the swap. A buy and a sell of the same pair have their own rates, and both can be negative at once.
Wednesday charges three nights
Trades settle two days after they happen, so a position held past Wednesday's rollover settles over the weekend and is charged three nights at once. A trade opened Tuesday and closed Friday paid five nights of swap across three rollovers, not three nights across three.
Read the figure before the trade, not after
Every instrument's Specification panel on the platform states its current swap: one figure for a buy (swap long), one for a sell (swap short), per lot per night, and the day the three-night charge lands. On MetaTrader 5, right-click the instrument in Market Watch and choose Specification. For a position held two weeks, swap can cost more than the spread and commission combined, so it belongs in the same cost sum lesson 2 built.