Margin Requirement
The share of a trade's full size you must put up as a deposit to open it, usually shown as a percentage.
The margin requirement is the deposit the broker asks for before it lets you open a leveraged trade. It is usually a percentage of the full position size. A 2% requirement means you need 2,000 dollars of your own to control a 100,000-dollar position, which is the same thing as 50:1 leverage.
Regulators cap how low this can go for retail traders, and brokers can raise it overnight before big events. Higher requirement, less leverage, more breathing room.
Deposit needed for one standard lot
- You want to buy 1 standard lot of EUR/USD: 100,000 euros, worth about 108,000 dollars at 1.0800.
- Your broker's margin requirement is 3.33%.
- 108,000 × 0.0333 = about 3,600 dollars.
Bottom line: About 3,600 dollars of your money gets locked up as margin while the trade is open.
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