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Partial close and the commission that gets charged twice

Closing half a position seems neutral. The commission on the closed part is charged, the remainder stays open, and later the rest closes with its own commission.

Some platforms split the original position into two tickets at the moment of the partial close. The remainder gets a new ticket number, and in some setups it inherits a fresh opening commission, as if a new trade had been opened.

Whether this happens depends on how the broker's back office treats partial closes. A clean system charges commission on the closing volume only. A sloppy one charges on the open and on the close of each ticket, and the total ends up higher than a simple closing of the whole trade.

Test with three small trades: open 0.10 lots and close fully. Open 0.10 and close in two halves. Open 0.10 and close in five parts. Compare the total commission. If it differs, the structure is rewarding or punishing scale-outs.

Scalpers who scale out heavily can pay a surprising amount in this way, and the history often hides it because each fragment shows a tiny number.

Does the total cost change when a position is closed in pieces rather than at once?

I ran almost exactly that test about a year ago on a raw spread account, and the result surprised me enough that I changed brokers. Closing 0.10 lots in one go cost the expected round turn. Closing it in five pieces cost noticeably more, because each partial close created a new ticket for the remainder and that ticket was charged an opening commission again. Over a month of scaling out it added up to roughly a sixth of my total costs.

The second broker I tested charged only on the volume closed, so the five-part close came out the same as a single close, give or take a cent of rounding. That is how it should work, and it is worth asking support directly before you assume.

One more detail to watch is rounding. Some brokers round commission per ticket up to the nearest cent or more, so very small fragments like 0.01 lots carry a bigger share of cost than their size suggests. I now never scale out in pieces smaller than a third of the position.