MT4 Market Watch Contract Specification - Margin Percentage? :(

Greetings traders,

Been a while since I’ve been here, I like what you’ve done with the place!!

I’m trying to get an IRON grip on how margin works for different pairs.

I want to be able to calculate EXACTLY how much margin is required for any given forex pair within my broker’s MT4.

I don’t want to be guessing where Margin Call will be.

I have bookmarked the page on my brokers website that declares all the current margin requirements, and I will consult this before every trade - https://www.etxcapital.co.uk/forex-trading/spreads-and-specifications

My real question here is WHAT THE HELL is Margin Percentage in the MT4 Market Watch ‘contract specification’ tab?
(Right-click any pair in the Market Watch pane, and select ‘Specification’)

I’ve checked it for all 28 major and minor pairs:

EURUSD 50%
GBPUSD 50%
AUDUSD 50%
USDJPY 100%
USDCHF 500%
USDCAD 50%
EURAUD 100%
EURCAD 100%
EURCHF 400%
EURGBP 50%
EURJPY 100%
GBPJPY 100%
GBPCHF 400%
NZDUSD 50%
AUDCAD 100%
AUDJPY 100%
CHFJPY 500%
AUDNZD 100%
NZDJPY 100%
NZDCAD 100%
NZDCHF 500%
GBPNZD 100%
EURNZD 100%
GBPCAD 100%
GBPAUD 100%
AUDCHF 500%
CADCHF 500%
CADJPY 200%

The only information I could find on it was here: Market Watch - User Interface - MetaTrader 4 Help

It just says:

“Margin percentage – determines what part of the base margin size value calculated according to the symbol type is charged”

Not very helpful :frowning:

I’m sure these wildly different percentages have a significant effect on position sizing, but does anyone know how they can be factored in to calculations so that we know exactly how much margin is required/available to use for any given forex pair?

Hugely grateful for any enlightenment on this.

Cheers,
Rez

I’ve found this explaination “For instance, accounts that will be trading in 100,000 currency units or more, the margin percentage is usually either 1% or 2%. So, for an investor who wants to trade $100,000, a 1% margin would mean that $1,000 needs to be deposited into the account. The remaining 99% is provided by the broker.”

lal.remigiusz, your explanation did not make no sense, you didn’t actually answer Rezes question properly.
I am also looking for the same answer…

@Rez @larryea this will explain

Basically stops you opening a trade unless you have the margin % in your account

So they protect themselves with a buffer against the possibility of the customer losing over 100% of his margin and then having to chase the customer for more money. So they set their risk software to block trading unless available margin is above 100% of required margin, for example 120% or 110% or 130% according to their own risk models.
This added available percentage over the required margin dictates the trigger to block the trade/order. This vital information can be found by right clicking the pair in the ‘market watch’ window and selecting ‘specification’ and looking at the ‘margin percentage’ variable.

margin required (in terms of base currency) = margin percentage * lot size * contract size / leverage

to get the margin required in terms of account currency, we can use an exchange rate.

for example, XAU/USD has a contract size of 100 and margin percentage of 333%.
for 0.1 lot of XAU/USD and leverage 1:100, margin reqd = XAU/USD * 333%* 0.1 * 100 / 100 = 566.1 USD (approx)

for another example, XAG/AUD has a contract size of 5000 and margin % of 200%.
for 0.01 lot of XAG/AUD, margin reqd = XAG/AUD * 200% * 0.01 * 5000 / 100 = 31.7 AUD (approx)

This “margin percentage” value is really mysterious. My margin percentage for XAUUSD is 0.3%. I asked my broker, what it meant and the CS said becaue leverage for metals is 1:333 (in my 1:1000 account :face_with_raised_eyebrow:), 1÷333 = 0.3%.
I said ok.
Then I asked, “why is it that the EURUSD pair has 100% margin percentage in the same account, the same math formula would work out to be a leverage value of 1:1. How does that work for a 1:1000 account?”. Then he started to not make any sense in his answers, giving formulas for margin level, which is a totally different thing.

One interesting thing to note. Your example for XAUUSD’s margin percentage is 333%, whereas mine is 0.3%. Isn’t that interesting?