Costs
See how much commissions, swaps, funding, borrow fees and dividends take from your trading, and where.
Costs
Costs shows what commissions, swaps, funding, borrow fees and dividends took from your closed trades: in total, as a share of your gross profit, per trade, by type, by hold time, by asset class and by symbol. Use it to see whether costs are the difference between a profitable and an unprofitable symbol or style.
The page is in Analytics → Reports → Costs. It follows your active account scope, filter, date range, P&L display mode and timezone. Every amount is in your display unit, so in × avg loss or percentage mode costs are shown as multiples of your average loss or in percent as well.
How costs are shown
Costs are shown as a plain amount without a sign wherever they appear on the page: in the headline, the figures, the tiles and the table. A cost type the broker paid to your account, such as a positive swap, a dividend, or a commission rebate, is a credit and is marked Credit. Gross and net P&L keep their sign and their profit and loss colors.
Read the page
The key in the top corner names the two lines of the chart, Net P&L and Gross P&L, and How to read this page opens this article.
The page leads with total costs and their share of your gross profit, such as "Costs took $1,240.00, 18% of gross profit." Gross profit is the sum of what your profitable trades made before costs. The line above it names the cost types your trades have. Under it:
- Gross P&L, your P&L before costs, with the number of trades whose costs are known.
- Costs, the total, with the average cost of one trade and, when every trade with known costs is a futures trade or a forex trade, the cost per contract or per lot.
- Net P&L, your P&L after costs, with the break-even per trade: the gross P&L an average trade must make to cover its costs.
The line under the figures counts where your commissions come from (see below) and, on your own accounts, links to commission settings.
The chart next to it draws your cumulative net P&L (solid) and gross P&L (dashed) by month of exit. The gap between the lines is what costs took. Hover a month to see both values.
Tiles
Below the lead, each tile answers one question with a figure, a sentence and a small chart:
- By type shows the largest cost type's share of your costs, such as "95% of costs are commission", the amount of each type, and a bar per type.
- By hold time shows the costs per trade in the hold-time bucket that costs the most, using the same buckets as Breakdown. The sentence names the hold time from which your trades also pay swap, funding, borrow fees or dividends; when your trades only pay commission, it says so. Each column is the costs per trade of one bucket, and a grey column has fewer than 5 trades.
- By asset class appears when your trades span at least two asset classes. It shows the asset class where costs take the largest share of gross profit, and a bar per class with its cost share.
Select a column or bar on By hold time or By asset class to see its trades.
By symbol
The table lists each symbol's trades, gross P&L, costs, net P&L and cost share, the share of the symbol's gross profit that costs took. Symbols with the highest cost share come first. When a symbol made money before costs and lost money after them, a sentence above the table names it and its row is marked Loses after costs.
Select a row to see its trades.
The trades behind a group
Selecting a symbol, hold time or asset class opens its trades in a side panel. At the top:
- Costs per trade in the group, compared with the costs per trade across all trades.
- Total costs of the group.
- Net P&L of the group, with its number of trades.
- A strip with one tick per trade at its net P&L, the group's average net P&L per trade (solid) and the average across all trades (dashed).
The trades follow, newest first. Select a trade to open it.
Where commissions come from
A trade's commission comes either from a commission rate you configured in instrument settings or from the commission your broker reported on the trade. The line under the figures counts the trades for each source and the trades without any commission. A trade without commission may be correct, for example on a commission-free account, or a sign that a rate is missing. When you view a shared account as a mentor, the link to commission settings is not shown.
When costs cannot be shown
- Costs are left out for trades whose gross P&L or costs cannot be expressed in your display unit, for example when an exchange rate is missing. A note under the page says how many trades this affects and that the totals do not include them.
- Costs could not be stated for these trades. appears when no trade in the view has known costs in the display unit. On your own accounts it links to commission settings.
- No closed trades in this view. appears when the account scope and filter match no closed trades.
- In tick and point modes, only trades of your main instrument class carry a value, because ticks of different classes cannot be added up. A note under the page says when this applies.