When you start currency trading, you are told by every forex broker that there are no commissions involved in forex trading. New traders take their brokers words as true and most think that the cost of trading is minimal.
Forex brokers also called FCMs (Futures Commission Merchants) make profits through the bid-ask spread they offer to their clients for each currency pair. This bid-ask spread is the trading cost for you and the profit for your FCM.
Lets do a simple calculation. Spreads are usually overlooked by the individual traders as the price they pay for trading. So lets calculate your cost of trading.
Suppose you are a day trader. You trade 5 times a day. Taking away the weekends, when you cant trade, there are 250 trading days.
As a day trader, you will open and close your position before the end of each trading day. That means each position is traded 2 times by you.
Suppose; your account size is $ 50,000. You are using a leverage of only 4. So this $50,000 will control (50,000) (4) = $200,000.
Your Annual Turnover will be; (5) (250)(2)(200,000)= $500 M. Huge! Now lets calculate how much your broker will make and what your spread cost is. Spread Cost= (Annual Turnover) (spread)/2.
Suppose the spread offered by the broker is 3 pips. 3 Pips Spread Cost= (500M) (0.0003)/2= $75,000.
Suppose the bid/ask spread offered by the broker is only 2 pips. 2 Pips Spread Cost= (500M) (0.0002)/2= $50,000.
You can see yourself, the cost of trading with a 3 pips spread versus a 2 pips is $25,000. This is 50% of your account equity. You see, a 1 pip difference can result in $25,000 more as trading cost for you.
You will have to make a profit of $75,000 simply to break even. Trading costs are one of the reasons most active traders fail in the long run.
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