Overnight Swap, Weekends and Hidden Costs

Overnight swap, weekends, and the costs nobody mentions

Every leveraged forex position is, underneath, a loan: you are effectively long one currency and short the other. Holding that position overnight triggers swap (also called rollover) — a charge or credit based on the interest rate difference between the two currencies, applied once for each night you hold the position past the platform's daily rollover cutoff.

It can go either way

Swap is not always a cost — depending on the pair, your direction (long or short), and current interest rates, it can be a small credit instead of a charge. It is also not fixed forever: rates change, and the swap shown for any instrument today is not a promise of what it will be next month.

Worked example (illustrative arithmetic only — check your own account)

Suppose your platform's contract specifications showed a swap of minus 6.0 points per lot per night for a long EUR/USD position (this is a made-up number for the arithmetic — always check the actual current figure on your platform before you rely on it, because it varies by instrument, direction, and time). On a 0.10 lot position held for 3 nights, that is 0.10 lot times 3 nights times 6.0 points — a small negative adjustment to your account each of those nights, on top of anything the price itself does. It looks tiny on one night. Held for weeks on a larger position, it adds up into a real, recurring cost that a lot of beginners never check before opening a "hold it for a while" trade.

The weekend rule

Currency markets close on weekends, but the interest that swap is based on does not pause. Because of that, most platforms charge triple swap on one specific day of the week to cover the Saturday and Sunday the market is shut — check your own platform's specifications for which day that is, since it is not the same on every platform and is not guaranteed to stay the same.

On the platform

This lesson's task asks you to hold a demo position open overnight and then come back and look at exactly what your account was charged or credited — a real number from your own account, not an estimate.