Spread and Swap Costs on MT4: At 23:00 UTC a 1-Pip Spread Is 105% of the Candle

Every backtest in this series is run on mid-price, and every one of them ends with the same caveat: before spread. This article is that caveat, measured. MT4 and MT5 show you the spread as a number of points and the swap as a line in a dialog box, but neither tells you what actually matters — how big those costs are compared to the movement available at the moment you trade.

Where do you see the spread in MT4?

Three places, and they show different things:

• Market Watch: right-click, tick Spread, and a live column appears next to Bid and Ask. This is the current spread, not the typical one.
• The chart itself: the Ask line is hidden by default. Right-click the chart, Properties, Common tab, tick Show Ask line. A second line appears above price and the gap between them is your spread, drawn to scale.
• Symbol specification: right-click the symbol in Market Watch, then Specification. This shows contract size, minimum stop level and swap values.

Turn on the Ask line once and leave it on. On a 5-minute EURUSD chart during quiet hours that line sits visibly above the candles, and seeing it is more persuasive than any number.

What does the spread actually cost, hour by hour?

Here is the measurement that changed how I think about this. I took the average high-to-low range of every 5-minute candle in each hour, across 16,926 EURUSD bars from June 3 to August 26, 2026, and expressed a standard 1.0 pip spread as a share of it.

The hours in this table are the same ones I rank by volatility in my breakdown of the best hours to trade EURUSD, seen from the cost side instead of the movement side.

The bottom two rows are the point of this whole article. At 22:00 and 23:00 UTC the average EURUSD 5-minute candle is smaller than one pip, so a normal spread is more than the entire bar. You are not paying a small toll to trade there. You are paying more than the market moves.

Note what this does to my own results. When I ran one breakout rule at every hour of the day, 23:00 UTC showed +1.40 pips per trade on mid-price — a respectable number. Subtract the spread and most of it is gone. The 13:00 to 14:00 block, meanwhile, keeps nearly two thirds of whatever it earns.

How do you convert spread into money?

On EURUSD, one pip on one standard lot is about $10, so the arithmetic is easy:

Twenty trades a day on 0.10 lots is $20 of spread, roughly $400 a month, before a single losing trade. That number is why frequency deserves as much attention as accuracy, and it pairs directly with my position sizing table for a $10,000 account.

What about swap, and when does it matter?

Swap is the overnight financing charge for holding a position past the daily rollover at 21:00 UTC. It reflects the interest rate difference between the two currencies, so one direction of a pair usually pays a little and the other usually costs a little.

• Where to find it: right-click the symbol in Market Watch, Specification, then read the Swap long and Swap short lines. They are quoted in points per lot, per night.
• Triple swap: most brokers charge three nights at once on Wednesday, covering the weekend settlement. A position held through Wednesday’s rollover pays three times the usual figure.
• Who it hits: anyone holding for days. On the two-hour holds in my Ichimoku cloud breakout test, swap is exactly zero, because nothing was ever held overnight.
• Swap-free accounts: usually replace the charge with a flat administration fee after some days. Check what replaces it before assuming it is free.

How do you keep costs from deciding your results?

• Trade the hours where spread is a small share of the range. 12:00 to 14:00 UTC costs a third of a candle; 22:00 to 23:00 costs more than one.
• Compare the spread to your target, not to zero. A 1 pip spread against a 5 pip target is 20% of the trade gone at entry.
• Watch the spread through releases. It widens exactly when the candle grows, which is why the tight-target setups in my news release test are less comfortable in practice than on paper.
• Trade fewer, larger setups. Spread is charged per trade regardless of size of move — the same reason wider stops behaved the way they did in my stop loss distance test.
• Ignore swap if you are intraday, budget it if you are not. Multiply the quoted figure by nights held, and by three if Wednesday is one of them.

Frequently asked questions

What is a normal EURUSD spread on MT4?

On a standard retail account, roughly 0.8 to 1.5 pips during London and New York hours, widening at the rollover and through news. The absolute number matters less than its ratio to the range: 1 pip is 34% of the average candle at 13:00 UTC and 105% at 23:00 UTC.

Why does my spread widen at 22:00 or 23:00?

That is the daily rollover window, when liquidity providers step back and volumes thin out. My data shows the average 5-minute candle in those hours falls under 1 pip, so the market is both cheaper to move and more expensive to enter at the same time.

Is a zero spread account actually cheaper?

Sometimes. Raw-spread accounts show a near-zero spread and charge a commission per lot instead. Add the commission back and compare the total against a standard account’s spread; for frequent small trades the raw account often wins, for infrequent larger ones the difference is minor.

How do I stop swap from being charged?

Close before 21:00 UTC. Any position flat at rollover pays nothing, which is why intraday approaches sidestep the question entirely. If you must hold, avoid carrying through Wednesday’s rollover where the charge triples.

Does the spread affect where I put my stop?

Yes, and more than most people allow for. A buy is entered at the Ask but stopped out on the Bid, so a stop placed exactly at the spread’s width from entry is already touched on entry. Add the spread to the stop distance rather than to the target — my fixed against ATR stop comparison shows how small the workable distances already are on a 5-minute chart.