Why does Rollover take place?

In the spot forex market, trades must be settled in two business days. If a trader sells 10,000 euros on Tuesday, the trader must deliver 10,000 euros on Thursday, unless the position is rolled over. As a service to our traders, MoneyForex automatically rolls over all open positions to the next settlement date at 5:00 PM USA EST. Rollover involves exchanging the position being held for a position expiring the following settlement date. The positions being exchanged are usually not valued at the same price. The amount of the difference varies greatly based on the currency pair, the interest rate differential between the two currencies, and fluctuates day to day with the movement of prices.

Rollover interest can provide an added stream of profit or loss to a client. As an example, a trader that believes the Great Britain Pound's exchange rate will stay roughly equal to the Japanese Yen's for the next year, will buy the GBP/JPY pair since the Pound has a higher interest rate and will accrue rollover interest. An account would be credited around $10 a day* for a standard GBP/JPY lot. If this trader's prediction comes true and the exchange rate is the same a year later, with fluctuations in between**, they would earn a year's worth of interest on the position. Since there are around 365 interest bearing days in a year, that one standard lot of GPY/JPY could potentially earn $3650 (365 � $10).***

* This rollover rate for the GBP/JPY is indicative of the rate on January 8th, 2007. (The actual rate for long GBP/JPY on that date is $14.12)
** This example assumes the position does not receive a margin call during these fluctuations.
*** The amount here assumes that the interest rate differential between the British Pound and Japanese Yen did not change through the year.