Discussing the article: "Carry Trade Logic in MQL5: Building an EA That Factors Swap Rates Into Position Sizing and Holding Decisions"
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Check out the new article: Carry Trade Logic in MQL5: Building an EA That Factors Swap Rates Into Position Sizing and Holding Decisions.
Most retail traders ignore overnight swap rates, but for long-term positions, these interest payments can make or break your strategy. This article shows you how to build a dynamic MQL5 module that retrieves real-time swap data and converts it into actual profit or loss in your account currency. You will learn how to program an Expert Advisor that automatically calculates if a trade is worth holding based on carry income and adjusts your position size to account for expected interest. It is a practical guide to turning a hidden cost into a mathematical advantage for your trading systems.
There is a common oversight that many retail developers fail to account for. They either ignore it, use a fixed number that doesn't properly account for market fluctuations, or procrastinate the math indefinitely. For scalpers, swap rates don't really matter as they never hold positions past the daily market rollover. For traders that hold positions overnight, and especially strategies built around high-interest pairs (like AUDJPY or NZDUSD), ignoring swap rates is like driving without checking your fuel gauge.
Swap rates are the overnight interest fees paid or earned when a trader holds a position past the daily market close. If you hold a higher interest currency (like AUD) against a lower interest currency (like JPY), you earn interest (positive swap); otherwise, you pay a fee if you are holding the lower interest currency against the higher interest currency (negative swap). The cumulative cost or interest earned over a week can determine if the trade will be profitable or not.
Most EAs do not account for swap rates. The swap rate shows up in the account history, but it plays no role in the entry decision, the holding period logic, or the position sizing. In this article, we will walk through the process of retrieving swap data in MQL5, converting it to a usable daily figure in account currency, and putting it to work. We will build four practical functions: DailySwapInAccountCurrency(), ExpectedSwapForPosition(), IsWorthHolding(), and CarryAdjustedLotSize(). Together they handle swap retrieval, hold-window projection, carry-justified exit decisions, and carry-aware position sizing. Each function is a self-contained building block that can be dropped into any existing EA without changing its entry logic.
Author: Ushana Kevin Iorkumbul