Margin isn't a fee — it's collateral. Here's how it moves against you when markets gap, and what actually triggers a broker-side liquidation.
You open a position. The market moves against you. At some point, a message appears on your platform: margin call. Shortly after, a position closes without your input. What just happened, and could you have seen it coming?
Margin calls are one of the most misunderstood mechanics in leveraged trading. They feel punitive — as if the broker chose to close you out — but they follow a strict arithmetic rule that's visible in your account the whole time. The rule matters more than usual in weeks like this one, where oil sitting above $100 per barrel, a live central-bank decision, and equity outflows are all colliding on the same tape.
This piece walks through what margin actually is, how the margin level percentage decides your fate, and how a gap — not a slow drift — is usually what catches leveraged accounts by surprise.
Margin Is Collateral, Not a Cost
When you open a leveraged trade, you don't pay for the full position. You post a fraction of it as used margin — collateral the broker sets aside from your balance while the trade is open. On a 1:100 leveraged account, a 1-lot EURUSD position (100,000 units) with a notional value near $110,000 might require roughly $1,100 in used margin. That number is locked. It isn't a fee — it comes back to your free margin the moment you close the position.
The two numbers that decide everything else are:
- Equity — your balance plus or minus the floating P&L of every open position.
- Used margin — the collateral locked against those positions.
Divide equity by used margin, multiply by 100, and you get your margin level percentage. This single number is what the platform watches in real time.
The Two Thresholds: Margin Call and Stop-Out
Most brokers, including us, publish two specific margin level percentages in the account terms. They usually look something like this (levels vary by account type — check yours):
- Margin call level, often around 100%. At this point, the platform warns you. Existing positions stay open, but you can no longer open new ones. You either add funds or reduce exposure.
- Stop-out level, often around 50%. At this point, the system begins closing your open positions automatically — usually the largest losing one first — until margin level climbs back above the threshold.
The stop-out isn't a decision made by a person watching your account. It's a rule that fires the instant equity divided by used margin crosses the line. That's why it can feel abrupt: the market doesn't announce when it's about to tip you over.
A Worked Example (For Illustration)
Assume a $5,000 account, 1:100 leverage, and one open position: 2 lots of a hypothetical instrument with a notional value of $200,000, requiring $2,000 in used margin.
- Starting equity: $5,000
- Used margin: $2,000
- Free margin: $3,000
- Margin level: 5,000 ÷ 2,000 × 100 = 250%
Now the position moves against you by $2,500 in floating loss:
- Equity: $5,000 − $2,500 = $2,500
- Margin level: 2,500 ÷ 2,000 × 100 = 125%
Still above the 100% margin call threshold, but the buffer has shrunk. Another $500 of drawdown takes equity to $2,000 and margin level to exactly 100% — the warning line. Push the loss to $3,000 and equity falls to $2,000 minus another $500 — sorry, to $1,500. Margin level: 1,500 ÷ 2,000 × 100 = 75%.
At 50% (equity of $1,000 against $2,000 used margin), the stop-out fires. The system closes the position at the next available price. If the market is moving fast, that available price may be several pips worse than the theoretical trigger level — and that gap between trigger and fill is where accounts sometimes settle at a lower equity than the arithmetic suggested.
These numbers are illustrative. Your own thresholds and leverage matter more than the shape of the example.
Why Gaps and News Events Change the Math
A slow grind against your position gives you time to react. A weekend gap or a data release doesn't.
Consider a scheduled event like this Monday's Canadian inflation print at 12:30 GMT+3, or the sequence of Chinese activity data landing overnight Tuesday. Between the last tick before the release and the first tick after, prices can jump straight through several pip levels without trading in between. If your margin level was already close to the stop-out threshold, the recalculation happens after the jump — meaning positions can be closed at prices well below where the platform's stop-out logic would have wanted to fire.
The same applies to unscheduled headlines. This past week, oil moved from the mid-$90s into triple digits on Strait of Hormuz news. For accounts holding leveraged positions in oil, indices, or oil-sensitive currencies, the recalculation of equity against used margin was continuous — but the price jumps between ticks weren't.
This is the practical reason margin call level and stop-out level exist as two separate numbers: the gap between them is your buffer to react, and gaps in price consume that buffer faster than a steady drift.
What This Means for How You Size a Position
The margin call isn't the risk. The risk is the position size that put you close enough to the stop-out threshold that a normal-sized adverse move could tip you over. A trader who runs at 250% margin level has room to be wrong. A trader who opens a position at 110% margin level has almost none.
One actionable takeaway: before opening any leveraged position, calculate what your margin level would be if the trade moved against you by the size of a typical daily range for that instrument. If the answer puts you below the margin call threshold, the position is too large for the account, regardless of how confident the setup looks.
Margin mechanics are arithmetic, not opinion. Every number you need is on the platform in front of you — the discipline is checking them before the market makes the check for you.
If you'd like to review the specific margin call and stop-out levels on your account type, they're published in our account specifications page.
For information only. This is market commentary and education, not investment advice. Figures are as at the time of writing.