Margin call

A margin call is a notification, not a negotiation. It fires automatically when your margin level touches the broker's warning threshold, and the threshold is policy rather than law, so it varies. FXOpen's support documentation describes a margin call when margin level falls below 100% and a stop-out below 50%. Alpari sets the margin call at 50% on its Standard account. Find your own broker's trading-conditions page and know your number before you ever see one. Two things about it are badly misunderstood. **It is not a grace period.** In US equities, where the relationship is documented in detail, [FINRA](https://www.finra.org/investors/insights/margin-calls) states that if you fail to meet a margin call and the firm does not grant an extension, the firm must liquidate assets in your account, that firms do not have to let you choose which securities are sold, and that they may sell enough to pay off your entire margin loan rather than just the shortfall. The same page notes: - Reg T lets a firm lend up to 50% of the purchase price on a new margin stock purchase. - FINRA's maintenance requirement is that equity must not fall below 25% of the current market value of the long securities. - Firms can set higher "house" requirements of their own, 30% or even 40%, and can raise them at any time without advance written notice. A leveraged FX or CFD account is an automated version of the same relationship. The level is a trigger sitting in a server, not a phone call from someone you can reason with. **Only two things actually clear it.** Add equity, or reduce used margin. Depositing refills the buffer. Closing positions removes both the exposure and the margin it was consuming. Waiting for price to come back is not a third option, it is a hope with your account posted as collateral. The trap is the deposit. It restores the ratio without touching the position that broke it, so the trader ends up wrong in the same trade with more money behind it. Cutting size is the only response that addresses the cause. And the honest read: if margin calls are a recurring event on your account, the market is not the problem. Your position sizing is.