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Leverage, Margin, Balance, Equity, Free Margin, Margin Level, Margin Call Level and Stop Out Level

1 June 2018, 00:31

Dorian Baranes

13 162

Introduction

The aim of this page is to explain important terms to trades on Forex market. This will help to define the size of a position or configure properly an Expert Advisor like Wolfgrid or my other products: https://www.mql5.com/en/users/dorian75/seller#products

We will use the example below to undestand those key terms:

Balance

Balance shows the amount of deposited money in your trading account. The profit/loss of your orders will be added or deducted to/from your trading account balance when you close your orders.

In our example the balance is 1004.54 USD

Equity

Balance and Equity show the same values as long as there is not any open order. When you have open orders in your trading account, the Balance will not change and it will stay fixed but the Equity will be floated according to the profit/loss of your current orders. The formula is:

Equity = Balance + Profit&Loss

Our example: Equity= 1004.54 - 18 = 986.54 USD

Leverage

Leverage is a feature offered by Forex brokers which helps traders to trade the larger amounts of currency pairs through having a smaller account balance.
In our example, the account leverage is 500:1, you can buy 500USD by paying 1USD. Therefore, to buy 100,000USD (one lot), you should pay only 200USD (100 000/500).

Margin

Margin is the amount of the money that is used to open a position or trade and it is calculated based on the leverage. In other words it is the amount of the money that gets involved in a position as collateral. This money is locked until the position is closed. The formula is:

Margin = (Price symbol x Volume) / Leverage

Our example: Margin= (1.16620 x 100 000) / 500 = 233.28 USD

Free Margin

Free margin is the difference of your account equity and margin used for the open positions. When you have no positions then no money from your account is used for margin.Therefore, all the money you have in your account is free. The formula is:

Free Margin= Equity - Margin

Our example: Free Margin= 986.54 -233.28 = 753.26 USD

Margin Level

Margin level is the ratio of the equity to the margin. Margin level is very important since brokers use it to determine whether the traders can take any new positions when they already have some positions.Different brokers have different limits for the margin level, but this limit is usually 100% with most of the brokers. This limit is called Margin Call Level. The formula is:

Margin Level %= (Equity / Margin) x 100

Our example: Margin Level= (986.54/233.28)x100 = 422.91%

Margin Call Level

100% margin call level means if your account margin level reaches 100%, you can still close your open positions, but you cannot take any new positions. Indeed, 100% margin call level happens when your account equity, equals the required margin.

Stop Out Level

For example, when the stop out level is set to 5% by a broker, the system starts closing your losing positions automatically if your margin level reaches 5%. It starts closing from the biggest losing position first. Usually, closing one losing position will take the margin level higher than 5%, because it will release the required margin of that position, and so, the total used margin will go lower and therefore the margin level will go higher.

The reason why this limit is setup is that the broker cannot allow you to lose more than the money you have deposited in your account.

#leverage, margin, balance, Equity, Free Margin, Margin Level And Stop Out Level

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Youssef 2020.07.20 01:15 #1

Thank you Dorian Baranes, it is a very good and useful article ,I have question about Margin Level.

i am try to create an EA, this expert open for me 8 positions but i want more positions opened , in this case Margin level equals 2797,56% (positions ==8), i don't understand where is the problem.

I checked Code Source more than once. I have no problem with it. I thought the broker It puts an end to me to open a new Position

Thank you again, I was searching a lot for these terms, and your article helped to see through them.

Files:

a.PNG 4 kb

Fernão Martin 2020.12.01 11:30 #2

Thank you very much Dorian Baranes. Your article is helpful to all traders.

mar9gm 2022.03.05 09:32 #3

Good morning

I see a very helpful presentation for that people not at first step

Main difficult to present the full aspects for new people or not trained accountants is:

Balance = All deposits - All withdrawals + past benefits - past loosings .

Balance is a fixed value, JUST for time as TotalOrders are the same( 0 or not 0) , and swap not modified.

Past benefits and past loosings are results from closed orders, including swaps and comisions,tax to broker.

UNDERLINE is a Starting Balance before all running orders opened,

and a new value Closing Balance after closing 1/many orders.

Any close of any running orders can modify Balance, except close order on 0 profit.

After closing 1 or more orders Balance is modified

Equity = Starting Balance + live benefits orders - live loosings orders.

IMPORTANT TO UNDERLINE

Temporary Benefits = Balance - Total Deposits : is usualy mantain in account Balance as REINVESTMENT.

PROFIT is Temporary Benefit which excede DEPOSITS and

is EXTRACTED from broker as CASH in individual bank account. That is important for tax calculations.

please take few minutes to this aspects, everything else seems to be very correct

many pips

Marius , mariusm7@gmail.com

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