Margin

COBS 22.5 requires a retail client to post margin in money, not other assets, to open a restricted speculative investment, and sets the minimum as a percentage of exposure. MetaTrader 5 describes margin as the money required to cover open positions and pending orders. For a forex symbol its formula is volume in lots times contract size, divided by leverage. Its worked example is one lot, contract size 100,000, leverage 1:100, which comes to 1,000 units of the base currency. That example is the platform's arithmetic. A UK retail account cannot use 1:100 on a major pair, because the FCA floor is about 30:1. Margin can be lost. It is not a fee that is refunded, and it is not the same thing as client-money safeguarding.