Swap / rollover

Swap, also called rollover, is the interest charged or paid on a forex or CFD position held open past the broker's daily rollover time (usually 5 p.m. New York); it reflects the interest-rate difference between the two currencies plus the broker's markup, and many brokers charge a triple swap on Wednesdays to cover the weekend.

Why it matters

Swap is invisible in the entry and exit prices but shows up in the account every day a position stays open. On some pairs it is small; on carry pairs and on gold or indices it can be significant, and it is almost always negative on at least one side. A signal channel that posts multi-day swing trades effectively asks you to pay several swaps per trade, and a strategy that looks profitable on price alone can be flat or negative after rollover. Prop-firm accounts often have their own rules about holding positions over the weekend.

How AlgoVesta handles it

AlgoVesta trades your MetaTrader 5 account directly, so swap is applied by your broker to the position exactly as for a manual trade and appears in the terminal's history and in the closed-trade data the platform reads from it. The per-trade results in the dashboard are taken from the terminal, and the closed-trade sync records the deal as the broker reports it. To control holding time, the bot has an optional auto-close rule that closes positions after a set number of hours, which can be used to avoid overnight or weekend swaps, and the daily loss and drawdown rules count equity including accrued costs where the terminal reports them. AlgoVesta never closes a position on its own initiative beyond the rules you set. See Forex on MetaTrader and prop firm automation.

Example

A long on AUDJPY of 0.20 lots is held for five nights, including a Wednesday. The broker's swap for that side is -0.9 units per 0.01 lot per night, so the trader pays about 18 units per night and 54 on Wednesday, roughly 126 units in total, which is deducted from the account before the trade's price result. With the auto-close rule set to 8 hours, the same signal would have been closed before the first rollover.

Common mistakes

• Ignoring swap when following swing-trade channels on high-swap pairs.
• Holding through Wednesday without knowing about the triple swap.
• Comparing a channel's pip results with your account results without the swap line.
• Breaking a prop firm's weekend-holding rule because a signal was left open.