> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://help.hydravision.ai/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://help.hydravision.ai/products/asset-profiler/carry.md).

# Carry

The cost of holding overnight

The panel headed **"Cost of holding"**, and the **Carry runway** tile at the top of the report.

{% hint style="warning" %}
**The common misreading.** That a positive swap on your side means this panel doesn't apply. It applies. The model deliberately charges the **expensive** side, whichever one that is. If you trade the free side, the report is being pessimistic on your behalf, and it says so.
{% endhint %}

### What it means

Every night you hold a position, your broker charges or pays swap. In a grid you're holding several positions, often for days. That accumulates, and it comes out of the same budget as your spread and commission.

The **runway** is how many days of that the budget allows before costs breach your tolerance. It's the tile at the top of the report.

* **Unlimited** — there's no overnight cost on this symbol on your account. The cost of a grid is fixed the moment it opens, and how long you hold changes nothing.
* **A number of days** — the clock is running. Compare it against the p80 retrace wait in the panel below.

### The rows in the panel

| Row                                   | What it tells you                                                                                                                                                       |
| ------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Swap mode**                         | How your broker calculates swap on this symbol. Sometimes marked *approx* — see below.                                                                                  |
| **Long / short, raw**                 | The broker's own swap figures for each direction. Negative means you pay.                                                                                               |
| **Carry charged by the model**        | What the report actually uses, in ticks per day, after the ladder adjustment.                                                                                           |
| **Ladder fill factor**                | See below.                                                                                                                                                              |
| **Runway at the working step**        | The same figure as the top tile. It is worked out at the cheapest step in the sweep: the recommended step when one is shown, otherwise normally the widest step tested. |
| **Carry equals the entry cost after** | How long you'd have to hold for swap to match what you already paid to open.                                                                                            |
| **Carry pressure**                    | Whether carry is heavy enough to change your best step. See [Recommended Step](/products/asset-profiler/recommended-step.md).                                           |

### The ladder fill factor

Positions in a grid don't all open at once. The first one is there from the start; the last one might open days later. So the last position pays far less swap than the first.

The fill factor converts a per-position daily swap into the average across a whole ladder. At the default of 0.667, the model assumes the average position across a grid carries about two-thirds of the swap a single position held from the start would.

That's why the carry the model charges is a fraction of a full position's daily swap. One thing to watch: the raw row is shown in your broker's own units, so on symbols quoted against the margin currency, the two rows aren't directly comparable.

### When carry is one-sided

Plenty of symbols pay on one side and charge on the other. As an example for a tested broker in 2022:

| Symbol | Long                        | Short                            |
| ------ | --------------------------- | -------------------------------- |
| XAUUSD | pays $58.84 per lot per day | **earns** $37.84 per lot per day |
| XAGUSD | pays $12.54 per lot per day | **earns** $1.88 per lot per day  |

The panel flags this with **"Carry here is one-sided"** and names the free side.

Two things follow from that:

**The report assumes you're on the expensive side.** Every carry figure, runway, pressure, the recommended step if there is one, is calculated for the paying direction. It never counts swap income as return, because a model that did would flatter a position for reasons that have nothing to do with whether the grid works.

**A grid only holds one direction at a time.** So if you run the free side through [Bias Selection](/ea-configuration/ea-settings/trade-settings.md#bias-trading), none of this applies to you.

{% hint style="success" %}
The panel checks whether the measured direction (Trend) agrees, too. That's a useful alignment, though it describes the window measured, not the future.
{% endhint %}

### Warnings you might see

**Swap reported as disabled, with non-zero rates.** A note in the panel says the server reports swap as **disabled** while leaving non-zero rates on the symbol. The report takes the mode as authoritative and treats the symbol as carry-free. Worth a quick check with your broker before you rely on it, since it's the kind of thing that changes without notice.

**Both sides exactly zero under an active swap mode.** A note in the panel says both sides report exactly zero under an *active* swap mode, which is unusual for the instrument class. Not impossible, but unusual enough to confirm.

***approx***** beside the swap mode.** Your broker uses a calculation the Profiler can only approximate. That covers swap charged in the symbol's own currency (`currency_symbol`, with no guaranteed conversion to your account currency), swap charged in the margin currency (`currency_margin`, common on indices), and any mode the terminal reports that the Profiler doesn't recognise. Treat the runway as indicative.

### What to do with this

* Compare runway against the p80 retrace wait, not against the median.
* If carry is one-sided, work out which side you'll actually be on before taking the runway seriously.
* Anything marked *approx* deserves a sanity check against a real position's swap charge.