Still don't understand Margin... please help

Hi there!

I hope someone could help me figure out some doubts regarding elementary concepts.

In case you wonder, I already read the Forex School section and didn’t find/understand the answer there.

The situation:

  • I opened a demo account with Global Prime with 4,500 USD
  • My demo account was “funded” in USD
  • Leverage is set to 100:1
  • I went long on the EUR/USD, 1 microlot at 1.14789
  • My account informarion says Margin is 10.00

… now my Problem is this:

  • The definition of a microlot is 1,000 units of the Base Currency
  • The Base Currency on the EUR/USD is the EUR
  • EUR/USD=1.14789, in order to buy one microlot, one would need 1,147.89 USD (1,000 x 1.14789), then the required Margin should be 11.47 instead of 10.00
    -What’s the mistake, what am I doing wrong?

Margin goes against the base currency you are selling (in this case Euros). So your 10.00 is actually 10 Euros…

I guess you mean buying, because when I’m going long on the EUR/USD, I’m buying the Euro and selling the Dollar.

The attached picture, is pretty Blurry, but it shows this data:
Balance: 4,569.31 USD
Equity: 4,569.14
Margin: 10.00
Free Margin: 4,559,14
Margin level: 45,691.4%

First, I thought the Margin was in Euro, but it looks like it’s in dollars. If you compare the Free Margin and the Balance, you will see they differ to 10 dollar and fraction (comission and price movement)