What is Margin?
Margin: The amount a broker sets aside from your balance to open a leveraged position, equal to the position value divided by the leverage.
More terms
- Liquidity
- How easily an instrument can be bought or sold quickly without moving its price; the more liquid it is, the tighter the spread.
- Long / Short
- Going long is betting the price will rise and going short is betting it will fall; CFDs and forex let you do both.
- Lot
- The unit of trade size: a standard forex lot is 100,000 units of the base currency, a mini lot 10,000 and a micro lot 1,000.
- Margin call
- A warning from your broker when your margin level falls to a set threshold, asking you to deposit funds or close positions before a stop-out...
- Margin level
- Your equity divided by the margin in use, times 100; it shows how close the account is to a margin call or stop-out.
- Market maker
- A broker that takes the other side of its clients' trades and sets its own buy and sell prices, usually earning from the spread.