How Broker Swap Rates Work in MT5: Modes, Units and Triple-Swap Wednesday

Hold a position past your broker's rollover time and your account is debited or credited a swap. For swing traders and anyone copying a strategy that holds overnight, swaps are a real cost line — often bigger than commission — yet they're quoted in units that differ broker to broker, which makes naive comparisons wrong.

Where the number comes from

A leveraged forex position is a loan in one currency funding a deposit in another. The interest-rate differential between the two — plus the broker's markup — becomes the overnight swap. That's why long and short swaps differ, why both can be negative (the markup), and why swap rates moved violently when central banks repriced in 2022–2024.

The MT5 swap modes — the part everyone misses

MT5's symbol specification carries a swap mode that defines the unit of the swap numbers: points, symbol base currency, margin currency, deposit currency, or annual interest percent. A "−5.86" quoted in points is roughly −$5.86 per lot per night on EURUSD (where a point on 1 lot ≈ $1), but on another symbol the same number of points is different money — and an interest-mode quote can't be compared to either without the position's notional value. Any table that mixes swap numbers across brokers without stating the mode is lying by omission. Our broker pages read swaps directly from each broker's MT5 specification and label the mode instead of converting by guesswork.

Triple-swap day

Spot FX settles two business days forward, so the weekend's financing has to be charged somewhere: Wednesday night, for most forex symbols, carries 3× swap. Metals and index CFDs often use Friday. If a nightly charge suddenly triples, check the symbol's specification before blaming the broker — it's usually the calendar.

What to do with this

If you hold positions overnight: find your symbols' swap values and mode in the MT5 specification (right-click the symbol → Specification), price them per night per lot, and multiply by your typical holding time. A −$6/night swap on a position held two weeks is −$84 per lot — enough to erase a decent edge. Your cost analyticsshow what swaps have actually cost you, and each broker's swap-rates page shows the current quoted values for symbols traded on connected accounts.