Holding time
Holding time — How long positions stay open — the number that decides which costs matter, and the fastest way to catch a gap between the strategy you describe and the one you trade.
Holding time is rarely on a dashboard and it is one of the most diagnostic numbers there is. It decides which costs matter, it exposes the difference between how you describe your trading and how you actually trade, and one specific comparison inside it catches the most common self-inflicted problem in the business.
In plain English
Holding time is close time minus open time, per trade, and the useful figure is the distribution rather than the mean. An average of four hours can come from a hundred trades all lasting four hours, or from ninety-five lasting twenty minutes and five lasting a week — and those are different strategies wearing the same number.
Its first use is cost structure. Under a day and swap is essentially zero while spread and commission dominate. Over several days and swap can exceed everything else combined. A trader optimising the wrong one of those is a common sight.
Its second use is the one that matters: compare the average hold of your winners against your losers. If losers are held substantially longer, that is the disposition effect showing up in your own data — cutting winners early and letting losers run, in the hope they come back. It is the single most common destructive habit in retail trading and this comparison catches it in one line.
The formula
Holding time = close time − open time The diagnostic: mean hold of winners ÷ mean hold of losers
- Both timestamps are server time, but the difference between two server times is timezone-independent, so this metric needs no offset — unlike session analysis.
- A ratio well under 1 means losers are held longer than winners.
Weekends inflate durations on positions held across them. A Friday-to-Monday trade shows about three days of holding time and roughly one day of market time.
Worked example — the demo account
The bundled demo account: 96 closed trades between 6 January 2025 and 9 April 2025.
| Average holding time | 7h 29m | |
|---|---|---|
| Trading days | 51 | |
| Trades per trading day | 1.9 | 96 ÷ 51 |
| Implied style | intraday | |
| Swap relevance | negligible | |
| Spread and commission relevance | the whole cost base |
An average hold of 7h 29m across roughly two trades a day — an intraday account, and its costs behave accordingly.
That single figure settles the cost question. At this duration swap is irrelevant and every cost decision is about spread and commission, which is why the −$329.04 commission bill is a meaningful number for this account and financing is not.
It also sets the expectation for everything else. Roughly two trades a day means 96 trades takes about three months to accumulate — so a sample large enough to draw firm conclusions from is a year of trading, not a fortnight of it.
Every figure above is from the demo account TapeSheet ships with — 96 closed trades, generated from a fixed seed. Open the same account →
What this does not tell you
The caveat is the part worth reading. Most tools put it in a footer, if they print it at all.
- The mean hides the shape. One position held for three weeks can dominate an average built from ninety intraday trades. Read the distribution, and read the maximum.
- It counts wall-clock time, not market time. Weekends and holidays inflate durations without any trading having happened.
- Nothing about what happened in between. A four-hour trade that went 60 pips against you before recovering and a four-hour trade that went straight to target are identical here.
- Nothing about intent. A short hold can be a plan working perfectly or a panic exit, and the duration cannot tell them apart. Only the journal note can.
Where TapeSheet shows it
Average, minimum and maximum hold on the Analysis view, with the duration on every trade in the list and in the detail drawer. Sorting the trade list by duration is the quickest way to find the outliers the average is hiding.
Questions
What is a good average holding time?
There is no such thing — it is a description of a style, not a score. What matters is whether it matches the strategy you believe you are trading. A trader who describes themselves as a scalper and shows an average hold of two days is not scalping, and that discrepancy is worth more than any target figure could be.
Why are my losers held longer than my winners?
Because closing a winner confirms a good decision and closing a loser confirms a bad one, and the second is much harder. It is called the disposition effect, it is one of the most robust findings in behavioural finance, and it is visible in most retail records. The remedy is mechanical rather than motivational: a stop that executes without you and a target you do not move.
Does holding time affect my costs?
Enormously, and in a way that flips. Under a day, swap is zero and spread plus commission are everything. Over a week, swap can exceed both — a single lot at −$8.40 a night costs over $300 in a month, more than ninety-six intraday trades cost this demo account in commission. Knowing your average hold tells you which cost is worth negotiating.
Related terms
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