Everything You Need to Know about Margin Trading with EXANTE

Margin trading, or trading with leverage, is a popular service utilized by investors to amplify potential profits. With margin trading, traders can place orders with larger amounts of money as brokers lend them additional funds to increase their purchasing power.

EXANTE, a global broker supporting advanced trading strategies including algorithmic trading, offers margin trading as part of its services. What is EXANTE’s policy on trading with leverage? Read this EXANTE broker opinion to find all the details you need to know.

Leverage by Default

The first crucial thing you need to know about trading with leverage on the EXANTE platform is that this service is enabled by default. This means that you can benefit from leverage for trading selected instruments such as CFDs, FX currencies, ETFs, bonds, and stocks without any additional setup.

While EXANTE activates margin trading for all new accounts, you can opt out of this service. This can be done by switching off margin trading in the Client’s Area of the Account Settings.

Keep in mind that some assets can only be traded with margin on the EXANTE platform. Options and futures are among them. Short selling stocks is also unavailable on non-margin accounts.

Yet, the broker allows its customers to combine different trading approaches. One method to utilize both margin trading and trading without leverage is to switch off margin trading on your main account and open a subaccount where you will keep margin trading on. From there, you can trade futures, options, and short sell stocks.

Leverage Rate

To fully understand how leverage works, it is recommended to review the specific information for the asset you wish to trade. To do this, select the “Instrument Info” module on the EXANTE application interface.

This will show you the current leverage rate or, as it is also referred to, ratio. This measure indicates the ratio of your debt, or the funds borrowed from the broker to the amount of your own funds used in a particular investment. In other words, the ratio describes how much capital you have borrowed or need to borrow to make a particular investment based on the current size of your financial balance.

EXANTE allows its customers to change the leverage rate. However, you will need to contact the Account Manager to request such a change.

At press time, margin requirements on the EXANTE platform varied significantly for different instruments. For FX, the leverage rate starts at 2% for major currencies, while for most stocks issued by S&P 500 companies, the rate starts at 20%. Meanwhile, EXANTE does not specify minimum margin requirements for options. These are determined based on the specific trading scenario.

Costs of Margin Trading

EXANTE does not charge anything for margin trading. Yet, it is necessary to remember that this service is provided only if you manage to keep margin utilization below 100%. This means that you open positions in such a way that there are sufficient funds in your balance to serve as collateral for margin trading.

Similar to other trading platforms, it is technically possible to exceed the margin utilization of 100% while trading with EXANTE. Yet, at this point, the broker will take actions to protect its funds from being borrowed without sufficient collateral.

To do so, EXANTE will first attempt to notify you about margin overutilization. If you act swiftly, you can provide your balance with additional funds and keep your positions. However, if you do not supply more collateral, the broker will have to initiate a margin call. This is essentially the closure of your positions to reduce the amount of borrowed funds and minimize the need for collateral, keeping margin utilization again below 100%.

While there is no charge for trading with leverage, EXANTE will request a payment of 90 EUR if it eventually has to liquidate your positions to decrease margin utilization.

How to Avoid a Margin Call on EXANTE?

As mentioned earlier, EXANTE will give you some time to adjust your balance to provide more collateral for margin utilization exceeding 100%. It is highly recommended to keep an eye on emails you receive from the broker to ensure your balance can cover the margin you are using.

Additionally, using the “Estimated Margin” function to thoroughly calculate margin utilization can help you avoid placing orders that might require more collateral for leverage than your account can provide.

Conclusion

EXANTE has democratized trading with leverage, eliminating any charges for using this service except for scenarios when the broker has to manually liquidate your positions because margin utilization has surpassed 100%. However, this scenario can be easily avoided as the broker first notifies its customers about the upcoming margin call and gives them a short time to readjust their balance to provide more collateral.

Meanwhile, EXANTE’s users can trade without margin by switching off the service without any difficulties.

William Castro