🧱 Basics·intermediate

Rollover

Also called: daily rollover, 5pm rollover

The daily process where your broker settles overnight interest on open positions — happens at 5pm New York time.

Rollover is the moment each day when forex spot positions are technically settled and re-opened. It happens at 5pm New York time, which is the official end of the global trading day. At rollover, your broker calculates the swap on every open position and credits or debits your account. On most days rollover is a single day of swap. On Wednesday rollover, you get a TRIPLE swap because spot forex settles two business days forward — Wednesday's rollover covers Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in one shot. That's why Wednesday's swap line in your account looks 3x bigger than other days. Rollover also briefly causes a liquidity gap. For a few minutes around 5pm NY, spreads can widen on most pairs as banks rebalance books. Scalpers usually avoid trading right at rollover for that reason.

Real trade example

Fund managers running USD/JPY carry trades in 2023 specifically built positions on Tuesday afternoons to capture the Wednesday triple swap on long-USD positions earning 5%+ rate diffs.

Related terms

Swap

intermediate

The interest you pay or earn for holding a forex position open overnight — based on the rate difference between the two currencies in the pair.

Carry Trade

advanced

A trade where you borrow a low-interest currency to buy a high-interest currency, profiting from the rate differential.

Interest Rate

intermediate

The cost of borrowing money set by a central bank — the single most important driver of currency strength in modern forex markets.

Liquidity

intermediate

How easily you can buy or sell an asset without moving its price — high liquidity means tight spreads and instant fills.

Trading Session

beginner

One of the four main daily time windows when a major forex center is open — Sydney, Tokyo, London, or New York.

Lot

beginner

The standard unit of trade size in forex — a standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency.

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