The Overnight Cost a Beginner Forgets — Cambodia

The nightly figure, instrument by instrument

A negative figure is taken from the account each night a position stays open; a positive one is added; $0.00 means nothing is charged on that side. One night a week counts three times to cover the weekend, and the day differs by instrument — energies are the exception and charge once per night. For a beginner the only line that matters is the one for the instrument the plan names, on the side the plan takes.

What a week of holding adds up to

A week here means 7 nights with one of them counted triple, so 9 charges in total; energies are charged once per night. Instruments with no swap on either side are left out. The figures move over time, so a plan that holds overnight re-reads them rather than remembering one number — the platform shows the current rate before an order is placed.

Why this catches first-time traders

Nothing on the chart shows it. A stop loss is visible, a spread is visible the moment a position opens, but swap arrives at a fixed time with no on-screen event attached, so it gets attributed to the market rather than to the calendar.

It also runs in both directions depending on the instrument and the side, which makes it hard to build an intuition for. The only reliable approach at this stage is to look the figure up for the specific instrument and side before holding a trade overnight, rather than assuming.

Putting it into the plan

Write down whether the plan holds positions overnight. If it does not, close before the rollover and the question disappears entirely.

If it does, add the nightly figure for the chosen instrument to the trade's cost before deciding whether the target is worth the trip. A target that only just clears the spread will not survive several nights of holding.

Traders who need to remove the overnight interest entirely can use a swap-free (Islamic) account on qualifying account types and eligible instruments.

Where this sits in a four-week practice run

The demo run answers one question about swap before any of the numbers matter: does the written plan hold positions past the daily rollover, or does it close before it? A plan that closes before it can ignore this page entirely for a first month.

If the plan does hold, the journal is where the cost becomes visible. Logging the entry, the exit and the number of nights held turns swap from an unexplained gap in the balance into a line item that can be planned around.

The habit worth building is small: before leaving a practice position open overnight, look up the figure for that instrument and that side, and write it next to the trade. After a fortnight the instinct is automatic and the surprise never happens on a funded account.

The one line a beginner actually needs

A table with every instrument on it invites reading all of it, which is the wrong instinct here. The plan names one instrument and usually one direction; that is one row and one column, and everything else on this page is background.

Write that single figure next to the trade in the journal, along with the number of nights the position was held. After a fortnight the pattern is obvious without any arithmetic: either the plan holds overnight often enough for this to matter, or it does not and the question closes.

The instrument the plan names is also the instrument to check before adding anything else. Carrying a swap assumption from one market to another is the same class of mistake as carrying a lot size.

The mistake this page is written against

A beginner rarely decides to hold a position overnight. It happens by default: the session ends, the trade is neither at the target nor at the stop, and closing it feels like admitting something. The position stays open because no rule said otherwise.

That is the moment overnight cost enters an account nobody planned for it to enter. It is small on a single night and stops being small across a fortnight, and because it arrives with no event on the chart it gets blamed on the market instead of on the missing rule.

The fix is one line in the written plan, decided before the first practice trade: positions are closed before the rollover, or they are held deliberately with the cost counted. Either answer works. Having no answer is what costs money.

What the first four weeks are really measuring

A practice run is not an attempt to make virtual money. It is an attempt to produce one readable document: a log of a few dozen trades taken under rules that did not change, with the reason for each entry written down before the result was known.

That document is the only thing a beginner owns at the end of the month that is worth anything. It says which rule gets broken, at which hour, and on which day of the week. No amount of reading produces the same information, and no shortcut replaces the four weeks it takes to gather.

It also settles arguments that are otherwise endless. Whether a plan needs a wider target, whether the chosen hour is workable, whether positions are being left open out of strategy or out of reluctance to close them — all of it is answered by a log and by nothing else.

Two refusals worth writing into the plan

Refuse to leave a position open because closing it feels like conceding. That is how overnight cost enters an account nobody decided to expose, and the journal shows it as a balance that moved for no recorded reason.

Refuse to change the rule halfway through a run. If the plan said intraday, it stays intraday for four weeks; the finding that it should have held longer is a result for the next run, not a licence to rewrite this one.

Deciding the overnight question in five minutes

1. Read the plan and answer one question in writing: does it hold positions past the daily rollover?
2. If it does not, close before the rollover and stop here — this page is background for the rest of the practice run.
3. If it does, find the row for the instrument the plan names and the column for the side it takes.
4. Scale the figure down from a standard lot to the size the plan actually uses.
5. Add it to the trade's cost for each night the position is expected to be held, and check the target still clears it.
6. Write the result next to the trade in the journal, so the balance never moves for a reason nobody recorded.

A plan that closes before the rollover has no overnight cost to manage, which is one reason intraday rules are simpler to test first.

What you see here, what to check, what to do next

Figures are per standard lot and move over time; scale them to the plan's lot size and re-read them.

What to read next on the way in