Margin, leverage, spread and lot

Can someone explain in laymen term regarding with above title. Really confused. Appreciate if there is some example. Im looking for fix spread broker and coming up with this terms as mention. Why broker doesnt offer fix spread and how does those terms effect your trading?

Welcome to the forum. All the terms you ask about above are clearly discussed, with easy-to-follow explanations and illustrative examples, right here: [B]School of Pipsology | Learn Forex Trading[/B] (and it’s all free).

(Some brokers do generally offer fixed spreads at some times of day.)

First of all, welcome to babypips.

Second, the terms that you ask for are the bare basic terms that you NEED to understand as a trader. Maybe someone wants to explain it to you, but if you are not trying to look for it yourself (there a kazillion threads about this on this forum) I question whether you will truly understand what they are and how it affects your.

So for your own good I am saying: Go figure it out yourself!

And fix spreads are equal to finding a unicorn, you may find something that looks like it, but it is still a horse with a fake horn on its head. (All traders would trade with that broker as we are all looking for fix spreads with a legit broker!).

Some may disagree, but if a broker truly and unbiased gives you the ECN market quotes there are price differences, so if a broker offer fix spreads they are artificially influencing them.

So welcome! :slight_smile:

So to comment on what Lexy said - If you don’t understand these terms completely even after you’ve tirelessly studied the Babypips School pages on these topics, don’t worry. I’ve been studying and trading Forex for nearly 5 years and I still don’t fully understand what some of those terms mean. Well… I should rephrase that. I don’t fully understand how some of those things work.
Lots is easy to understand, however, and Spread is not too difficult to understand. However, Babypips cannot go into the exhaustive details of these terms as complicated as they are.
At first I thought they were fairly simple to understand and years later I realize that I don’t know what the hell is going on.

Trust me, this isn’t something you need to get hung up on.
It will drive you mad.

Margin and leverage is actually the same. The higher the margin, the lower your leverage.

If you have a margin of 2% you are allowed to trade an amount that is 50 times your accountbalance, or in other words your accountbalance should not be less than 2% of the amount you trade. This is a leverage of 1:50.

This 2% is a safeguard for the broker that they have some time to interfere when a trade goes bad. In that case your account will be depleted after 200 pips loss. There are rarely 200 pips spikes, so your broker knows that there is only a 5% change that your account will go sour on a bad day.

When you have a 5% margin you can trade 20 times your accountbalance in on trade. In this case you account will depleted after 500 pips. this is a 1:20 account.

Sometimes you see a 1:1000 account. In this case you can trade 1,000 time your balance and your account will be depleted after 10 pips. Here there is a more than realistic change that you will kill your account in a trade.

You don’t have to fully use your leverage. You can trade 1:50 on a 1:1000 account if you trade an amount less than is allowed. But you cannot trade 1:1000 on a 1:50 account.

An example for a 1:50 trade:

Balance is 100 EUR and EURUSD is 1. You can trade 50 times your balance, so you can enter a trade for 5,000 USD. 1 pip for 5,000 USD is EUR 0,5. In this case you will gain/lose EUR 0,5 per pip. As you have EUR 100 on your account this means that you cannot have more than 200 pips loss on that trade as 200 pip * EUR 0,5 is EUR 100.

for a 1:1000 trade you gain/lose EUR 10 per pip ((EUR 100*1000 Leverage)*0.0001[one pip]) so your account is empty after 10 pip (10 pip * EUR 10 per pip is 100 EUR).

So with a 1:1000 account you can gain/lose more in one trade (20x as much) than a 1:50 account with the same money on your account but there is a much higher change that you will lose your account in a bad trade. And if it is a very volatily market you can even lose more than what is on your account and you will have to pay your broker the losses you made and were not covered by your account balance.