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Monday, May 18, 2009

Margin Makes Foreign Exchange Trading Exciting

By John Eather

Margin is one of the key features that makes foreign exchange trading so exciting a prospect. Without a factor like margin, trading in this area would be completely out of reach for the ordinary man in the street who wants to invest in this area. However, what exactly does "Margin" mean?

Foreign exchange traders are able to control large lots of currency by means of margin. They are able to do this while investing relatively small amounts of money. The trader will open an account with a forex broker in order to gain access to leverage. In this way they can control lots of up to $100 000 in foreign currency, this is the generally accepted size of these lots.

Through leverage the broker or trader is able to make a small deposit of say $1000, which will allow him a leverage ratio of 100:1. Essentially this means the broker is able to have access to a 1% margin which in the case of a $1000 deposit is $100 000. One hundred times their initial deposit!

The trader is able to access large profits when trading on a margin, but this also means that losses can also be incurred. Money likes speed so although the risk of losses exists, safeguards are generally put in place to limit these losses. A broker will generally terminate any transaction before it goes above the deposit margin, but in some instance more than the initial deposit may be lost.

An example of how cash is traded is that it is positioned at 2 decimal places. Forex on the other hand is traded at 4 decimal places. So normal currency may be for example $1.25, and forex would stand at $1.2567. The smallest unit in foreign currency exchange is the "pip" and this on a lot of 100 000 only equals $10. This amount bears no significance to a forex trader, while it may make the average American tourist decide not to take a holiday in Aruba this year. Profits and losses are decided by far larger drops and increases in the value of forex than $10 on $100 000 and this is what makes trading in margins so exciting. - 23229

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