¿Qué es el margen utilizado?

What does “Margen usado” mean?

In order to understand what Used Margin is, we must first understand what Margen requerido es.

Whenever you open a new position, a specific amount of Margen requerido is set aside.

Required Margin was discussed in detail in the previous lesson, so if you don’t know what it is, please read our What is Margin? lesson first.

If you open more than one position at a time, each specific position will have its own Required Margin.

If you add up all of the Required Margin of all the positions that are open, the total amount is what’s called the Used Margin.

Margen usado is all the margin that’s “locked up” and can’t be used to open new positions.

This is margin is already being “used”. Hence the name, Margen usado.

While Required Margin is tied to a SPECIFIC trade, Used Margin refers to the amount of money you needed to deposit to keep ALL your trades open.

Example: Open a long USD/JPY and USD/CHF position

Let’s say you’ve deposited $1,000 in your account and want to open TWO positions:

1. Long USD/JPY and want to open 1 mini lot (10,000 units) position.
2. Long USD/CHF and want to open 1 mini lot (10,000 units) position.

The Margin Requirement for each currency pair is as follows:

How much margin (“Required Margin”) will you need to open each position?

Since USD is the base currency for both currency pairs. a mini lot is 10,000 dollars, which means EACH position’s notional value is $10,000.

Let’s now calculate the Required Margin for EACH position.

USD/JPY Position

The Margin Requirement for USD/JPY is 4%. Assuming your trading account is denominated in USD, the Required Margin will be $400.

Required Margin = Notional Value x Margin Requirement

$400 = $10,000 x 0.04

USD/CHF Position

The Margin Requirement for USD/CHF is 3%.

Assuming your trading account is denominated in USD, the Required Margin will be $300.

Required Margin = Notional Value x Margin Requirement

$300 = $10,000 x 0.03

Since you have TWO trades, the Used Margin in your trading account will be $700.

Used Margin = Sum of Required Margin from ALL open positions

$700 = $400 (USD/JPY) + $300 (USD/CHF)

Here’s a cool diagram of how Used Margin relates to Required Margin and Balance.

Recapitulemos

En esta lección hemos aprendido lo siguiente:

• Margen usado is the TOTAL amount of margin currently in use to maintain all puestos vacantes.
• Said differently, it is the SUM of all Margen requerido being used.

En lecciones anteriores, aprendimos:

• ¿Qué es el comercio de margen? Sepa por qué es importante entender cómo funciona su cuenta de margen.
• ¿Qué es el equilibrio? El saldo de su cuenta es el efectivo que tiene disponible en su cuenta de operaciones.
• ¿Qué es el beneficio no realizado y realizado? Sepa cómo afectan los beneficios o las pérdidas al saldo de su cuenta.
• ¿Qué es el margen? El margen requerido es la cantidad de dinero que se reserva y “bloquea” al abrir una posición.

Sigamos adelante y conozcamos el concepto de Equidad.