Swap calculator

Why one weekday costs three nights

Settlement conventions mean the weekend has to be financed, and brokers charge it on a single weekday — commonly Wednesday. A ten-night hold spanning two of those is charged as fourteen nights, which is a 40% difference from the naive calculation.

This is the specific thing most swap calculators get wrong by omission, and it compounds on longer holds. Swap rates also differ by direction: the long and short rates on the same symbol are rarely mirror images once the broker's markup is applied.

Read your own rate

Swap rates change without notice and vary by broker, account type and instrument. Right-click the symbol in Market Watch, open Specification, and read the long and short swap values there. A typical figure from an article is not a substitute — the variation between brokers on gold is large.

Why intraday systems ignore this entirely

A strategy that closes before the daily rollover pays no swap at all. That is a genuine structural advantage rather than a detail, and it means comparing an intraday bot against a swing system on gross return alone understates the intraday system.

Our engine trades a defined session window and does not carry positions across rollover, so swap does not enter its cost model. What does dominate instead is spread and commission, paid on every trade rather than every night.