Insufficient Funds

[jlcontra]

Hello Everyone

Very new to finance, around 2 weeks. All on demo accounts.
I deposited 49.99 this morning.
Today I was going to go live. Was ready when the market opened. Stop loss 30 under / Take Profit 102 over. Volume 0.01
For 10 minutes I tried to get an order in each time I would bring in my spread and every time I would get insufficient funds. I think the last one I tried was SL 2 under and TP 8 over.
Other than the obvious, adding more funds, is there anything I can do to place an order with 49.99.
I admit I am a little frustrated because the market did what the Buy order hoped it would in 10 minutes.
I am guessing it has something to do with the Leverage.
Thank you in advance.

 

[Enivid]

Hello!

First, the insufficient funds problem isn't related to the stop-loss you are trying to set.
Second, whether you will have enough funds to open a position depends on five factors:

1. Available margin (that's your $49.99). You can deposit more to be able to open more expensive trades.
2. Leverage provided by your broker. You can check it with your broker and increase it if possible.
3. Contract size. Normal contracts in Forex are 100,000 units of the base currency. Mini contracts are 10,000 units. Some exotic currency pairs or other instruments can have different contract size. You can check this by right-clicking the symbol in the Market Watch and selecting Specification.
4. Trade size (that's your 0.01). In MetaTrader 4, you cannot go lower than that, so there isn't much to help with here.
5. Trading instrument. Buying 1 lot of GBP/USD requires more $ margin than buying 1 lot of USD/JPY because 100,000 GBP is more expensive than 100,000 USD. So, you might be able to take a 0.01 trade in some cheaper instrument.

Third, at this stage in your trading career, it is still best to trade using a demo account, unless you are fully ready to lose that small live account (which is a normal thing while learning).

 

[jlcontra]

Hello!

First, the insufficient funds problem isn't related to the stop-loss you are trying to set.
Second, whether you will have enough funds to open a position depends on five factors:

1. Available margin (that's your $49.99). You can deposit more to be able to open more expensive trades.
2. Leverage provided by your broker. You can check it with your broker and increase it if possible.
3. Contract size. Normal contracts in Forex are 100,000 units of the base currency. Mini contracts are 10,000 units. Some exotic currency pairs or other instruments can have different contract size. You can check this by right-clicking the symbol in the Market Watch and selecting Specification.
4. Trade size (that's your 0.01). In MetaTrader 4, you cannot go lower than that, so there isn't much to help with here.
5. Trading instrument. Buying 1 lot of GBP/USD requires more $ margin than buying 1 lot of USD/JPY because 100,000 GBP is more expensive than 100,000 USD. So, you might be able to take a 0.01 trade in some cheaper instrument.

Third, at this stage in your trading career, it is still best to trade using a demo account, unless you are fully ready to lose that small live account (which is a normal thing while learning).

OK so I want more leverage then... I selected the smallest one because I wasn't surer how the margin call would work and I did not want to owe more money than I deposited... I have $1,000 to invest but do not want to lose it all in one night my plan is to invest as follows 50, 100, 150, 200, 500.

Thank you for the info, I do appreciate it. I am going to put in some demo time before my market opens,

 

[fargana]

Hello Everyone

Very new to finance, around 2 weeks. All on demo accounts.
I deposited 49.99 this morning.
Today I was going to go live. Was ready when the market opened. Stop loss 30 under / Take Profit 102 over. Volume 0.01
For 10 minutes I tried to get an order in each time I would bring in my spread and every time I would get insufficient funds. I think the last one I tried was SL 2 under and TP 8 over.
Other than the obvious, adding more funds, is there anything I can do to place an order with 49.99.
I admit I am a little frustrated because the market did what the Buy order hoped it would in 10 minutes.
I am guessing it has something to do with the Leverage.
Thank you in advance.

Spread can be too wide after session opening on some trading instruments, so I would suggest to try opening a trade with the same setting when spread returns to normal level.

 

[jones44]

Trading with low Equity, usually ends up in nil balance.