How to Find Your Broker's Triple Swap Day and Price the Real Cost of Carry

Swap is the cost that never shows up in the spread. It is charged once a day, quietly, for holding a position overnight, and few traders have actually looked at where their own broker keeps the number, or worked out what a specific holding period will cost before the trade is opened. Where the broker keeps the number Every MetaTrader symbol carries swap settings set by the broker, and they are visible without opening any indicator: right click the symbol in Market Watch, choose Specification, and read four rows. Swap long and Swap short give the per-night charge for each direction. Swap type states which unit that charge is quoted in. Three-day swap names the single weekday on which the broker charges three nights at once instead of one. Why one day carries three Most brokers charge three nights of swap on a single weekday to cover the weekend that follows, rather than spreading the charge evenly across the week. Which weekday carries the triple charge is not standardized: it varies between brokers, and can vary between symbols quoted by the same broker. The Three-day swap row in Specification states that day as a fact for the specific symbol being checked, not as something assumed from another broker or another symbol. A position open on that one weeknight pays three times the normal per-night rate; a position that avoids it by shifting entry or exit by a single day pays the ordinary single rate instead. Pricing a holding period, not one night A single night's figure answers a narrower question than the one a trade plan usually asks. What matters before opening a multi-day position is the total for the whole holding period, and that total is not the per-night rate multiplied by the number of nights, because the calendar is not uniform. Walking forward from the entry date, each ordinary night counts once, the single weekday named in Three-day swap counts three times if it falls inside the period, and the closed weekend itself carries no charge at all. Which weekday the plan starts on decides whether the triple night lands inside the holding period or just outside it, so the count has to follow actual calendar dates from the intended entry, not a generic count of weekdays. What swap type changes Swap type decides how the raw Specification numbers become money. Points and deposit currency modes convert into account currency directly. Annual interest modes convert through the position's value instead of converting directly. Which type applies is part of the same Specification reading, right alongside the per-night rate itself. A smaller set of brokers use swap types where turning the raw number into money would mean guessing at currency rates a terminal simply does not have on hand. For those, the honest number is the broker's raw value as printed in Specification, not a converted figure built on a rate that was never actually available. A precise-looking figure built on an assumed rate is less trustworthy than the unconverted one, not more. Checking before a multi-day trade Before holding a position across more than one session, the Specification window on the account actually being traded answers the whole question: the per-night rate for the direction being taken, the single weekday named in Three-day swap, and whether the planned holding period crosses that day. The account matters as much as the symbol, because a demo connected to a different broker shows that broker's swap schedule, not the one that will apply to a live position, and comparing the two produces a wrong number. A free panel called Swap Cost Calendar automates this same reading and the calendar walk across a chosen holding period, but the two numbers that decide the whole picture, the per-night rate and the weekday named in Three-day swap, come straight from the Specification window every MetaTrader installation already provides for every symbol.