What Is Swap in Forex?
Hold a forex position past your broker's rollover time and a small amount is added to or subtracted from it — the swap. It comes from the interest-rate gap between the two currencies in the pair, adjusted by the broker's own financing terms, and on one night a week it is applied three times. The sections below explain where swap comes from, why it can be negative in both directions, how the Wednesday triple charge works, and where to check the exact rates inside MetaTrader.
Key takeaways
- Swap (rollover) is the financing adjustment applied once per trading night when a position is held past the broker's rollover time.
- It is rooted in the interest-rate differential between the two currencies in the pair, plus the broker's own financing markup.
- Long and short swap are quoted separately — and after the markup, both directions can cost money at the same time.
- Most forex pairs apply triple swap on Wednesday night: spot FX settles T+2, so rolling Wednesday's settlement past the weekend means financing three calendar days at once.
- Exact rates live in the MetaTrader symbol specification; they are broker-specific and change when interest rates or financing terms change.
- Over multi-day holds, accumulated swap can rival the spread as a cost — the Swap column in your own trade history shows what it actually took.
Rollover: the adjustment behind every overnight position
A spot forex trade is, formally, an agreement to exchange two currencies two business days after the trade date (T+2 settlement). Retail positions are never actually settled — instead, any position still open at the broker’s daily rollover time is rolled one day forward, and a small financing adjustment is applied to it. That adjustment is the swap, also called rollover or overnight interest.
Rollover happens once per trading day, typically at 5:00 p.m. New York time, which on most platforms coincides with midnight in the broker’s server time. A trade opened and closed within the same trading day never pays swap; a trade held across the rollover moment pays (or earns) it every night it stays open.
Where swap comes from: two interest rates and a markup
Holding a currency pair means holding one currency and owing the other. Buy EUR/USD and you effectively hold euros financed by borrowed dollars — so overnight you notionally earn interest at the euro rate and pay it at the dollar rate. The interest-rate differential between the two currencies is the core of the swap; the broker then applies its own financing spread on top.
- If the currency you hold yields more than the one you owe, the raw differential works in your favour and swap can be positive.
- If it yields less, the differential works against you and swap is negative.
- Either way, the broker’s markup shifts the final number against the trader — which is why published swaps are rarely as generous as the raw rates suggest.
Central bank policy rates anchor those differentials, so swap values drift over time as policy changes. The current stance of the major central banks is summarised in the free Central Bank Rates monitor.
Swap long, swap short — and why both can be negative
Every symbol carries two separate values, because the financing logic flips with the direction of the trade:
Swap long
Applied to buy positions held overnight. For EUR/USD it reflects earning the euro rate and paying the dollar rate, minus the broker's markup.
Swap short
Applied to sell positions held overnight. The same differential with the sign reversed — again minus the markup, so it is not a mirror image of swap long.
Because the markup is subtracted from both sides, a pair whose two currencies yield almost the same can show negative swap in both directions. That is normal, not an error: the differential is near zero, so the financing spread dominates.
Triple swap: why Wednesday counts three times
Swap is charged per settlement day rolled, not per night the market is open. A position rolled on Wednesday night moves its T+2 settlement date from Friday to the next valid business day — Monday. That skips the weekend, so three calendar days of financing fall due at once. The market is closed on Saturday and Sunday, and no further swap accrues then: the weekend was already paid for on Wednesday.
Monday night
1× swap
Settlement rolls Wednesday → Thursday: one day of financing.
Tuesday night
1× swap
Settlement rolls Thursday → Friday: one day.
Wednesday night
3× swap — triple swap day
Settlement rolls Friday → Monday, skipping the weekend: three calendar days charged at once.
Thursday night
1× swap
Settlement rolls Monday → Tuesday: back to one day.
Friday night
1× swap
Settlement rolls Tuesday → Wednesday: one day. Holding over the weekend adds nothing extra — that was Wednesday's job.
Wednesday is the convention for spot forex; some non-FX instruments use Friday instead. MetaTrader exposes the applicable day per symbol as the “3-day swap” field in the specification, so there is no need to guess.
Where MetaTrader shows swap rates
Right-click any symbol in Market Watch and choose Specification. Alongside contract size and margin settings, the dialog lists everything swap-related:
| Field | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Swap type | How the value is expressed — in points, in money, or as an annual interest percentage. |
| Swap long / Swap short | The per-night value for buy and sell positions, in the units of the swap type. |
| 3-day swap | The weekday on which the triple charge is applied (Wednesday for most forex pairs). |
On the account side, every position carries a running Swap column in the terminal and in the account history, so the financing each trade accumulated is recorded separately from its price profit or loss — which makes it easy to audit afterwards.
What swap means for multi-day strategies
For scalpers and day traders swap is irrelevant — nothing is held overnight. For swing and position strategies it is a recurring cost (or occasionally a credit) that scales with position size and holding time. With a points-type swap, the nightly amount is straightforward to estimate:
Nightly swap ≈ lots × contract size × point size × swap rate (points)
- swap rate
- the symbol's swap-long or swap-short value, in points
- point size
- 0.00001 on five-digit EUR/USD quotes — one tenth of a pip
- contract size
- 100,000 units of base currency per standard lot
An illustrative week of swap on one lot
- Buy 1.00 lot of EUR/USD on Monday before rollover and hold it through Friday's rollover into the weekend.
- Illustrative rates: swap long −7.2 points, swap short +2.1 points (every broker's values differ).
- Nightly cost on the buy: 100,000 × 0.00001 × −7.2 = −$7.20.
- Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday nights: 4 × −$7.20 = −$28.80.
- Wednesday night (triple): 3 × −$7.20 = −$21.60.
- Week total: 7 swap days = −$50.40 — roughly 5 pips of cost on this position.
Five pips a week changes the arithmetic of a trade that targets 60 pips over three weeks far more than it changes a two-hour scalp. It also stacks on top of the spread, which is paid once per trade rather than per night. Reviewing the Swap column of your own MetaTrader history — grouped by symbol and holding time — is the only reliable way to see whether overnight financing is a rounding error or a leading cost in your results.
One boundary worth stating plainly: this article describes how the mechanism works, as a set of illustrative scenarios. It is not tax advice, and it is not a recommendation to hold, avoid or structure positions in any particular way — how swap is treated for accounting or tax purposes depends entirely on your jurisdiction and circumstances.
Frequently asked
Why did I pay three days of swap on Wednesday?
Spot forex settles two business days after the trade (T+2). A position rolled over on Wednesday night moves its settlement date from Friday to Monday — three calendar days — so three days of financing are applied at once. The weekend itself then passes with no further swap.
Can swap be negative on both the long and the short side?
Yes, and on many pairs it is. Brokers add a financing markup to both directions, so when the interest-rate differential between the two currencies is small, the markup outweighs it and holding the pair costs money whichever way you trade it.
Where do I see swap rates in MetaTrader?
Right-click a symbol in Market Watch and open Specification. It lists swap long, swap short, the calculation type (points, money or interest) and the three-day swap day. Closed positions show the accumulated amount in the Swap column of the account history.
Is swap the same at every broker, and does it stay fixed?
No on both counts. Each broker sets its own values based on its liquidity providers and financing terms, so the same pair can have noticeably different swaps at two brokers — and brokers update the numbers when central bank rates or their own terms change.
Related guides
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What Is Spread in Forex?
The bid/ask gap as a per-trade cost: fixed vs variable spreads, why they widen, and what frequent trading adds up to.
MetaTrader Server Time Explained
Why MT4/MT5 charts and history run on broker time, the GMT+2/+3 convention, and converting timestamps to UTC or local.
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Sources & further reading
- MQL5 Documentation — Symbol properties (swap long / swap short) — the platform-level swap fields, calculation modes and three-day rollover setting.
- Bank of England — Why do interest rates matter? — a central-bank explainer on policy interest rates, the anchor behind swap differentials.
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This article is for educational purposes only. It does not provide trading signals, investment advice, financial recommendations, broker recommendations or trade execution. Market and macro information is educational and should not be interpreted as a trading recommendation.