The Wednesday swap that ate a morning's work
A short story that repeats more than anyone admits. A scalper, flat every evening for months, leaves one trade open a few minutes past 5pm because the setup looks too good. It is a Wednesday. The statement the next day shows a swap charge three times the size expected.
Triple swap is not a broker trick. Spot trades settle two business days after the trade date, so the Wednesday roll covers Saturday and Sunday too. Every broker applies it, just under different names.
On a micro lot the charge is pocket change. On a larger size in a high negative carry pair, it can erase a full morning of scalping profit in a single line item.
And it works the other way. On a pair with positive carry, holding through Wednesday rollover credits triple, which is a strange little edge nobody builds a strategy around but a few notice.
The mechanics are worth a minute. Spot settlement is two business days out, so a trade rolled on Wednesday settles the following Monday, which means three days of interest get booked in one night. Brokers pass that through as a single bigger swap line. Nothing is hidden, but nothing is announced either.
What did the first unexpected swap charge look like, and did it change the routine?
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The Wednesday swap that ate a morning's work
The Wednesday swap that ate a morning's work
It’s Fairman 
Recommended broker for automated trading & scalping
Re: The Wednesday swap that ate a morning's work
Most brokers charge triple swap on Wednesday night, because spot forex trades settle two business days later. A position held over Wednesday night settles on Friday into Monday, covering the weekend, so three days of swap are charged. For a trader holding positions with negative swap, Wednesday's charge is three times the normal daily amount. That can be a surprise for anyone who doesn't usually hold overnight. It is easy to miss if you do not hold trades often. Wednesday night deserves a quick check before holding anything.
It’s Fairman
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Re: The Wednesday swap that ate a morning's work
Mine was a smaller shock, but it changed my routine anyway. I was holding a 0.5 lot short in a pair with a negative carry for the position, thinking I would leave it for a few minutes after the rollover. The next morning, a charge of $11.40 appeared against what I thought would be a total of about $3.80, which took longer to understand than it should have. It was a Wednesday, of course.
After that I set a hard rule: at 4:30pm New York time every day, I either flatten or I look up the swap for the specific pair and direction in the platform's symbol specification, and I write the figure next to the position. On Wednesdays I multiply it by three before deciding. It takes about one minute.
The other thing I do is a monthly check of the swap line in my statement against my own calculation. Twice the broker applied the rate differently from the published table at month end, and I would never have noticed otherwise.
After that I set a hard rule: at 4:30pm New York time every day, I either flatten or I look up the swap for the specific pair and direction in the platform's symbol specification, and I write the figure next to the position. On Wednesdays I multiply it by three before deciding. It takes about one minute.
The other thing I do is a monthly check of the swap line in my statement against my own calculation. Twice the broker applied the rate differently from the published table at month end, and I would never have noticed otherwise.