Margin call

When there are not enough available funds in your account to meet margin requirements, the broker issues you a warning, which is called a Margin Call.

Your broker automatically sends a margin call when your free margin reaches $0 and your margin level reaches 100%. From now on, it will be impossible to open new positions.

Thanks to leverage, traders get leverage that allows them to open positions that are several times larger than the size of their trading account. This helps to earn much more, but losses are also growing. It is at such moments, when you hold too large a position and the market goes against you, that you can get a margin call. This will trigger the automatic closing of all stop-out positions if the market continues to move against you.

An example of a margin call.

You open a forex trading deposit of $4000 and use a leverage of 1:100. As we know, the lot size on forex is equal to 100,000 units of the base currency ($ 100,000). When using the leverage of 1:100, you must deposit $ 1000 of your money as collateral for each open transaction in the amount of one lot.

After analyzing the EUR/USD currency pair, you decide that the price will rise. You open a long position for two standard lots at EUR/USD. This means that you are using $2,000 of your funds as collateral. At the same time, the free margin will also be $ 2000. The cost of one item when trading one lot of software will be equal to $ 10. This means that if the price drops by 200 points, the free margin will reach $ 0, the equity level will be equal to the margin used, and you get a margin call.

How can margin calls be avoided?

To avoid margin calls, you need to follow the rules of risk management. Before opening positions, you need to know where your stop loss will be and how much it will equal as a percentage of capital. The distance from your entry point to your stop loss should determine the size of your position and, accordingly, your risk level. Do not do the opposite: the size of your position should not determine the size of the stop loss.

You may have heard that it is not worth risking more than 5% of the capital in one transaction. Trading according to this rule is, of course, better than trading without rules, but an experienced trader will still say that it is too dangerous to risk 5%. Using the 5% rule, you can lose 20% of your capital in just 4 trades, which is too much.

The more money you lose, the more difficult it will be for you to return to the previous level of your trading capital. Serious drawdowns are also psychologically difficult for most novice traders. You may even start trading out of a desire to recoup and start opening even bigger positions to try to recoup your losses. But this will no longer be a trade, but a gambling game.

Never risk more than 2% of your trading account in any transaction. If you are just starting to trade forex, 1% risk will be even more appropriate. After you become confident in yourself and your trading strategy, you can slightly increase the size of your position. In any case, 5% is too much for most trading strategies. Even the best traders can make 4 or 5 losing trades in a row.

If you want to trade using large lots, you must have the appropriate amount of capital. This is the only safe way to trade for large amounts.

The number of positions you open at the same time determines your risk at any given time. If you risk only 2% of your trading account in one trade, do not think that you can open 10 positions at once — this is a sure way to get a margin call.

Even if you only open two positions, but you are trading correlated currencies, you are still risking 2% in one trade. An example of this could be a risk of 1% on a long EURUSD position and a simultaneous risk of 1% on a long GBPUSD position. If there is a sharp jump in the market due to the US dollar, you will receive a loss on two positions and lose 2%.

Therefore, try not to open multiple positions on correlating currency pairs, or at least be aware of the possible risks.

Traders, if you liked this idea or if you have your own opinion about it, write in the comments. I will be glad 👩‍💻