A trading cost calculator shows the complete cost of entering and holding a trade - including spread, commission per side, overnight financing charges, and any currency conversion costs. For South African traders using ZAR accounts, this helps compare brokers honestly and understand how holding costs accumulate on leveraged positions over multiple days.
This calculator is for educational purposes only. Results are estimates. Not financial advice.
Enter your values above and click Calculate. Adjust any input to instantly see updated results. All calculations run client-side in your browser - no data is sent to any server.
This tool is built for South African traders using ZAR-denominated accounts or trading international instruments through FSCA-regulated brokers. Values are rounded for readability; full precision is used internally.
For intraday traders, spread is typically the largest cost. For traders holding positions overnight or for multiple days, overnight financing (swap) becomes significant and can exceed the spread cost.
At approximately 6% per annum on the full notional value, holding a R100,000 notional USD/ZAR position overnight costs approximately R16.44. Over a week that is about R115 in financing alone.
Most retail forex and CFD brokers operating in South Africa use a spread-only model with no explicit commission. Commission-based models are more common for share CFDs and with ECN account types.
It is the number of pips price must move in your favour before you have recovered all entry and holding costs. A 3-pip spread and 2-pip commission means price needs to move 5 pips before you are in actual profit.
ZAR carries a higher interest rate than USD or EUR. When holding a long USD/ZAR position you are effectively borrowing USD and holding ZAR, resulting in interest rate differential costs that vary with the SARB repo rate.
Cost impact is proportional - for a R5,000 account trading 0.01 lots, costs are minimal relative to account size. The efficiency concern grows when trading too large for the account size.
Yes. Enter identical trade parameters and compare total cost across brokers. A 1-pip difference in spread on 100 trades per month compounds significantly over time.
Beyond spread and commission, consider swap fees for overnight positions, any currency conversion fees, and account-related charges like inactivity fees, all of these combine into your genuine total cost of trading.
Not necessarily, the true comparison depends on your specific trading style and frequency, this is exactly why calculating total combined cost, rather than comparing spread or commission in isolation, gives a fairer broker comparison.
Proportionally far more for scalpers, since they target smaller price moves and trade more frequently, the same absolute cost per trade represents a much larger share of a scalper's typical profit target than a swing trader's.
Yes, genuinely, a backtest that ignores realistic trading costs can significantly overstate a strategy's true viability, always incorporate a realistic cost estimate when evaluating whether a strategy's edge survives real-world execution.
Yes, spreads in particular often widen during lower-liquidity periods (like around session close, or immediately before major news), meaning your total cost per trade can vary depending on when you execute.