Spreads, swaps and commissions

Three costs can come with a trade in eTrader: the spread, a commission and a swap. Your Broker or prop firm sets all three for your account, and eTrader shows you each one as it is charged. This guide explains where to see them and how they reach your balance.

The spread

Every instrument has two prices. You buy at the ask and sell at the bid, and the ask is the higher of the two. The gap is the spread, and you pay it once on every trade: a buy opens at the ask and closes at the bid, a sell opens at the bid and closes at the ask.

That is why a new position starts slightly negative. A buy opened a moment ago is valued at the bid, one spread below the price you paid, so its Profit shows the cost of the spread from the first second.

You can see the spread in three places:

• The Spread column in Market Watch, in pips, updated with every price.
• The Sell and Buy buttons on the New Order ticket, which carry the bid and the ask.
• The chart, which is drawn from the bid. Switch on Show Ask Line in Settings (Chart Colours, at the bottom of the chart type menu) to draw the ask as well.

The spread is the market's gap between buyers and sellers plus any markup your Broker adds, and your account group can carry an extra markup. It is not fixed. It moves with the market and can widen, for example when a market opens. Your Broker publishes its typical spreads.

Commission

Some accounts pay a commission per lot traded. It is set by your Broker for each instrument, and your account group can raise or lower it. Where it applies:

• The commission for the whole round turn, opening and closing, is charged when the position opens. A rate of 3.00 USD per lot for each side costs 6.00 USD per lot in total, all of it shown from the start.
• It is shown as a negative amount in the Commission column. Add the column from the Columns button in the Trade tab if you do not see it.
• It is already taken off the Profit figure of the open position.
• A partial close takes the matching share of it with the closed part. The rest stays with the lots still open.

Commission is shown in your account currency, even when the Broker's rate is set in another.

Swap

A swap is the charge, or on some instruments the credit, for holding a position overnight. Your Broker sets a rate per lot for buys and another for sells on each instrument, so the swap on a buy and on a sell of the same instrument can differ in size and even in sign.

• It is applied at the daily rollover, once for each weekday night the position is held.
• The Wednesday rollover counts three times, to cover the weekend. There is no rollover on Saturday or Sunday.
• A position opened and closed on the same day, before the rollover, pays no swap.
• The running total shows in the Swap column and is already inside Profit.

Some Brokers offer swap-free accounts, often called Islamic accounts. On one of those, swap is always zero. Whether your account is swap-free is set by your Broker, so ask them if you need it.

Seeing the costs of a closed trade

Click any closed trade in the History tab. The Trade window splits the result into four lines:

The spread has no line of its own. It is already inside the gross profit, because the trade opened at the ask or bid and closed at the other.

The CSV statement from the History tab has the same four figures for every closed trade, and a Totals section that adds them up for the period. See Trade history and CSV export.

Who sets them

eTrader is the trading platform. It holds no money and sets none of these rates. Your Broker or prop firm sets its spreads, commissions and swaps for each Server, and it can place your account in a group with different terms. For the current figures on your live account, check your Broker's website or ask their support. Finding your firm's details is covered in Find your Broker.