Maintenance Margin
Margin & Leverage
Maintenance margin is the minimum equity that must be kept in an account to hold open positions, below which a margin call or stop-out is triggered.
What is maintenance margin?
Maintenance margin is the minimum level of equity a trader must keep in their account to continue holding an open leveraged position. It’s a separate, ongoing requirement from the initial margin needed just to open the trade in the first place — think of initial margin as the entry ticket, and maintenance margin as the minimum balance needed to keep your seat.
If equity falls below the maintenance margin requirement — because a position is losing money — the broker will issue a margin call and, if equity keeps falling, eventually force a stop-out.
A worked example
Suppose a broker requires 1% initial margin to open a $100,000 position, and sets maintenance margin at 0.5% of that same position’s value.
- To open the position, the trader needs $1,000 of initial margin (1% of $100,000).
- To keep the position open, equity must not fall below $500 (0.5% maintenance margin) once the position is running.
If the position moves against the trader and account equity drifts down toward that $500 floor, the maintenance margin requirement is breached, and the broker’s margin-call and stop-out mechanics kick in — even though the position was successfully opened with more margin than that floor requires.
In practice, many retail forex and CFD brokers blend initial and maintenance margin into a single ongoing margin requirement tracked via margin level, rather than quoting the two as separate percentages the way some exchange-traded futures and stock margin accounts do — but the underlying concept, a minimum equity floor to keep a position alive, is the same either way.
Why maintenance margin matters
Maintenance margin is the mechanism that converts “the market is moving against me” into a concrete number the trader must respect. It’s what determines exactly how much room a position has to move against the account before triggering broker intervention, making it directly relevant to position sizing and to how many simultaneous positions an account can safely support.
Quick recap
- Maintenance margin is the minimum equity required to keep an existing position open.
- It differs from initial margin, which is what’s required to open the position in the first place.
- Falling below maintenance margin triggers a margin call, then potentially a stop-out.
- Many retail platforms track this via a single ongoing margin level rather than two separate published percentages.