Guide
What futures commissions and slippage cost your own account
Commissions and slippage are small on any one trade and add up over a year. This guide explains what each one is, how to weigh them against your results, and what Fillbook's cost card shows for an own-capital account.
Commissions and fees are charged win or lose
Your broker charges commissions, and the exchange and clearing add fees, on every contract you trade whether the trade wins or loses. Illustrative example, not a quote: 1.50 dollars per contract round trip, 10 contracts and 20 trades in a month comes to 300 dollars. If that month's profit before fees was 1,000 dollars, fees took 30 percent of it. Check your own broker's fee schedule for real figures.
Slippage is the gap between the price you wanted and the price you got
Slippage is how far a fill lands from the price you intended. It is adverse when it is worse for you: paying more on a long, receiving less on a short. Example: you intend to buy MNQ at 20,000.00 and are filled at 20,000.50. That is half a point, or 2 ticks, worth 1 dollar per contract at 2 dollars per point, so 3 dollars on 3 contracts.
What the cost card shows
On the Dashboard of an own-capital account, further down the page, the Commission & slippage impact card shows three figures: commissions and fees in total and per trade, fees as a share of gross profit, and slippage in dollars. Gross profit here means profit before fees: each trade's P&L is stored net of fees, so Fillbook adds the fees back. The share is shown only once the logged trades are profitable before fees. The Account tab of Intelligence adds fees per contract and a month-by-month table of fees and their share for the last six months.
Why slippage often shows a dash
Fillbook can only measure slippage for a trade whose data includes the price you intended, and most trade exports do not. Where it is missing, the card says so, and where it is measured it shows how many trades the figure rests on, for example 12 of 40. It never estimates or fills in a number.
What the card leaves out
Fees come from the fee recorded on each logged trade, so a CSV without fees understates them. The cost of simply keeping a trading setup running is separate: on the Cash flow page you can log data feed, platform, software, VPS and education costs, and Fillbook shows your results after that overhead, month by month.
Check your own costs
Add an own-capital account in Fillbook to see fees and measured slippage from the trades you log.
See how it worksCommon questions
No. It reports slippage only where your trade data includes the intended price, and says how many trades that covers.
It is shown only when the logged trades are profitable before fees. A share of a loss, or of nothing, says little.
From the fees stored on each trade you imported, synced or entered. If your source did not include fees, the card cannot show them.
Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. This guide is general education, not advice, and it cannot account for your situation. Read the full disclosures.
For how the account's value and drawdown are tracked, read the guide to the high-water mark and drawdown.Trading your own capital? See how Fillbook works for your own capital.