Spreads, commissions and swaps: the real cost of a trade

Every trade starts slightly in the red. Before price moves in your favour, it has to cover what it costs to open, hold and close the position. Each cost looks small on its own. Together they set how far price must move before a trade breaks even, and with a $50–$100 account they can be a noticeable share of your balance.

This guide covers the three main costs: the spread, commissions, and overnight financing (called swaps in FX and funding in crypto perpetuals). It explains how each one works across FX, metals, indices and crypto, and how to combine them into a break-even figure. It is general education only and does not recommend trading anything.

The three costs at a glance

• Spread: the gap between the buy (ask) and sell (bid) price. You buy at the ask and sell at the bid, so a full round trip costs one spread in total. Measured from the mid-price, about half is paid when you open and half when you close. It is not charged twice.
• Commission: an explicit fee per trade or per lot. Some accounts charge it, and some build their charge into a wider spread instead.
• Financing: a debit or credit for each night (or each funding period) a position stays open.

Regulators treat these as separate costs that add up. When ESMA restricted retail CFDs in 2018, its decision stated that "In addition to transaction fees, spreads and various other financing costs and charges may be applied."

Spreads: the cost of crossing the market

The spread is the difference between the highest price a buyer is willing to pay (bid) and the lowest price a seller is willing to accept (ask). If you buy at the ask and close immediately at the bid, you lose the spread once. In effect, it is the friction cost of entering or exiting a position immediately, rather than waiting for a counterparty to match a specific price target.

The spread is a real cost even on accounts that advertise "no commission". France's market regulator says buying and selling CFDs involves fees equal to the spread, meaning the gap between the CFD's buy and sell prices (AMF, Les CFD).

Spreads move

On most retail platforms the spread is not fixed. They can widen when liquidity falls, volatility rises, news changes pricing uncertainty, or the market passes through lower-liquidity opening, closing, or rollover periods. The daily FX rollover is a known pressure point: rollover often coincides with the New York-close transition, when thinner liquidity can produce wider Bid-Ask spreads.

A wider spread affects your orders as well as your costs. A wider spread can increase transaction costs and change the Bid or Ask relevant to an order trigger. A stop-loss placed close to the market can be hit by a brief widening even when the mid-price barely moves.

How spreads differ across markets

• FX: the most heavily traded pairs generally have the tightest spreads, and less-traded pairs generally cost more, because a narrower bid ask spread typically signals high liquidity, while a wider spread indicates lower liquidity or higher risk.
• Metals and indices: the spread is quoted in price points rather than pips. The same logic applies, and quiet hours and data releases tend to cost more.
• Crypto: markets trade around the clock, but liquidity still varies a lot by coin, venue and time. Smaller tokens can have much wider spreads than the largest coins.

Commissions: the visible fee

Commissions are the easiest cost to see because they appear as a separate line on your statement. Retail providers usually price accounts in one of two ways:

1. Spread-only: no separate commission. The provider's charge is built into a wider quoted spread. 2. Raw spread plus commission: a tighter spread plus a fixed fee per lot or a percentage of trade value, usually charged on both opening and closing.

Neither model is automatically cheaper. It depends on how often you trade, how large your positions are and which instruments you use. The fair way to compare is to turn everything into one number: total cost per round trip for the same position size. Count each cost once. One trading education guide advises traders to evaluate spread, commission, applicable swap and potential currency conversion separately, without subtracting an already included expense twice.

Crypto exchanges usually charge a trading fee per order, and the rate often depends on whether your order adds liquidity to the order book or takes it. Fee schedules differ by venue and change over time, so check the venue's current schedule directly.

Swaps: the cost of holding overnight

FX: the interest-rate differential

Rollover fees, also called swaps, are overnight adjustments applied when a currency position held overnight passes the broker's daily cutoff — typically around 5 p.m. ET. They are calculated based on the interest rate differential between the two traded currencies in a pair, combined with broker markups and the exact cutoff timing.

The swap can be a credit or a debit. A trader may pay or receive these fees based on the order type and the interest rate of each currency. The markup matters too: brokers add a markup to the interbank differential, so the same pair can cost different amounts at different brokers.

Central bank rates drive the underlying differential, so it changes over time. As of late October 2026, the Federal Reserve held at 3.75% to 4.00% on 28 October 2026, the ECB held its 2.50% rate on 29 October, and the Bank of Japan held at around 1.25% on 30 October. One market commentary noted the rate gap between the Fed's upper bound of 4.00% and the ECB deposit rate of 2.50% as 1.50 percentage points. One older outlook page lists different ECB and BoJ figures, so check the central banks' own websites before relying on any number.

The Wednesday triple swap

Most FX providers book three days of swap at once midweek. Wednesday's triple swap is a calendar consequence of T+2 settlement: the rollover bridges Friday's value date to Monday's, so three days of financing are booked at once. Not every instrument follows this schedule. Some instruments use different triple swap days, which is common with index and commodity CFDs, so check the provider's contract specifications.

The flip side is that a position opened and closed during the same trading session before that cutoff does not incur an overnight swap, including the Wednesday triple adjustment.

Metals and indices

Gold, silver and index CFDs held overnight usually carry a financing adjustment too. Providers generally base it on a benchmark interest rate plus their own markup, and each publishes its own formula. Financing is calculated on the full position value, not on the margin you put up.

Crypto: funding rates and CFD financing

Crypto perpetual futures have no expiry date, so they use a funding rate instead. The funding rate is a periodic payment exchanged directly between long and short position holders, calculated from the gap between the perpetual contract's price and the underlying spot index price. If the contract trades above spot, longs pay shorts; if it trades below, shorts pay longs.

Funding is charged often. On most centralized exchanges (including Binance, BloFin, Bybit, and OKX), funding rates are calculated and settled every 8 hours, at 00:00, 08:00, and 16:00 UTC. Other venues work differently: Some platforms charge every 8 hours, and others every 1, 2, or 4 hours. That matters because a rate of 0.01% charged every hour costs eight times as much as 0.01% charged every eight hours.

Small rates add up. One exchange's education page estimates that a steady 0.01% charged every 8 hours works out to roughly 11% a year in funding costs alone, assuming the rate and your position size never change. Timing matters as well: if a trader closes their position before the funding timestamp, they do not pay or receive funding.

Crypto CFDs from a broker work differently. They usually charge a nightly swap applied once for each night a position is held, at the platform's rollover, not funding periods set by an exchange.

Leverage: costs follow the full position, not your deposit

This is where small accounts get caught out. Spreads, commissions and financing are all calculated on the full value of the position. Leverage lets you control a position much larger than your deposit, so a cost that is tiny relative to the position can be large relative to the account.

Regulators cap retail leverage partly for this reason. ESMA's limits for retail CFDs are 30:1 for major currency pairs; 20:1 for non-major currency pairs, gold and major indices; 10:1 for commodities other than gold and non-major equity indices; 2:1 for cryptocurrencies. In the US, the CFTC limited leverage available to retail forex traders to 50:1 on major currency pairs and 20:1 for all others. In the UK, crypto derivatives cannot be sold to UK retail clients at all (banned since 6 January 2021).

The caps exist because losses were common. Before the measures, ESMA and national regulators analysed retail CFD accounts and found that a large majority lost money – typically between 74% and 89% of accounts. In the EU, retail clients are also protected so that a retail client cannot lose more than the funds in their CFD account. That protection stops losses from going beyond your deposit, but it does not stop you losing the deposit itself.

Hypothetical example: a $100 account opens a $2,000 gold position at 20:1. A 1% move against the position costs $20, which is 20% of the account. A 5% adverse move costs $100, wiping out the account, and that is before any trading costs. Leverage magnifies losses just as much as gains, and costs come on top.

Working out your break-even

Your break-even is the price move needed to cover every cost:

Break-even move = (spread + commissions + expected financing) ÷ value of a one-point move

Hypothetical FX example (round numbers, for illustration only):

• Account: $50. Position: 1,000 units of a USD-quoted currency pair, so a 0.0001 move (one pip) is worth $0.10.
• Spread: 2 pips = $0.20, paid once across the round trip (about half on entry and half on exit, measured from the mid-price).
• Commission: $0.10 round trip.
• Swap: a $0.03 debit per night. The trade is held from Monday to Monday and crosses one Wednesday, which gives 7 swap charges: 0.03 × 7 = $0.21.
• Total cost: $0.51. Price needs to move about 5 pips in your favour just to break even, which uses up roughly 1% of the account before any result from price itself.

The mix of costs changes with how long you hold:

• Short intraday trades are mostly spread and commission. Trading many times a day multiplies these, and trading into news or rollover can make each trade more expensive.
• Multi-day or multi-week holds are increasingly driven by financing. Every extra night, every Wednesday triple and every crypto funding period raises the break-even.
• Crypto perpetuals can change cost mid-trade, because the funding rate resets each period and can switch between positive and negative.

A cost checklist before you trade

General education, not a recommendation:

• Read your provider's cost disclosure and contract specifications for the exact instrument.
• Check both the long and short swap rates, and which day the triple charge applies.
• For crypto perpetuals, check the funding interval and convert rates to a daily figure before comparing venues.
• Don't assume quiet-hours spreads will hold during news or around rollover.
• Work out your break-even as a share of your account, not just in pips or points.

Markitel is not a broker, custodian or adviser. It does not set or collect any of these costs; your provider does. Any trade idea, including the output of Markitel's rule-based ten-factor technical engine, still has to clear your provider's actual costs.

Key takeaways

• Every trade carries a spread, often a commission, and financing on any position held past rollover or a funding timestamp. Add them up to find your break-even.
• A round trip costs one spread in total, roughly half on entry and half on exit. Spreads widen in thin liquidity, around news and near the daily rollover, which can raise costs and trigger nearby stops.
• FX swaps follow interest-rate differentials plus a provider markup, with a triple charge usually on Wednesday. Crypto perpetual funding is commonly charged every 8 hours, though some venues charge hourly.
• Costs are calculated on the full position value, so leverage makes them, and any losses, much larger relative to a small account.
• Turn every cost into one number per round trip, and compare it with your account size before trading.