Why did my broker close my position without my consent?

Any trade that an investor makes can either be profitable or result in a loss. In accordance with the Terms of Business for STANDARD and NANO Accounts and the Terms of Business for ECN and PRO.ECN Accounts, Alpari maintains the right to close all or part of your loss-making positions at the current market price when your margin level in MetaTrader drops below 10%, 20% or 60% (depending on the account type).

You can use the following formula to calculate your margin level: Margin Level = Equity / Margin × 100%.

If you have several open positions on your account in MetaTrader 4, the position with the highest level of floating losses will be closed first. If you have several open positions in MetaTrader 5, the position with the highest starting balance will be closed first.

Example 1: Let's start with a trading account for the MetaTrader 4 terminal with the following details:

Here, the equity on the account is 4,494.30 USD and the margin is 345.48 USD, making the margin level 1,300.90% (4,494.30 / 345.48 × 100% = 1,300.90%). When the equity level on the account drops to 68.75 USD, the margin level will drop below 20% (68.75 / 345.48 × 100% = 19.9%). At this point, the broker will have the right to begin closing loss-making positions.

Example 2: Now, we'll take a look at a second account for the MetaTrader 4 terminal:

There are two open positions on the account:

• BUY 3.0 lots GBPUSD at 1.62181
• BUY 7.0 lots GBPUSD at 1.62300

Here, the margin is 3,243.69 USD (more on calculating margin requirements).

If the floating losses on the account reach 16,283 USD, the equity will drop below 648.74 USD, or 20% of the margin (3,243.69 × 20% = 648.74). At this point, the broker will have the right to begin closing the trader's open positions. The order for 7.0 lots will be closed first, since it has the highest level of floating losses.

Example 3: Now let's take a look at a trading account for the MetaTrader 5 terminal with the following details:

In our example, the equity on the account is currently 2,756.03 USD with a starting balance of 1,668.87 USD. The leverage on the account is 1:500. If the account's margin level drops to 60%, the position with the largest deposit will be forcibly closed, which in this case is the position on the EURUSD currency pair: (5 × 100,000 / 500 = 1,000 EUR = 1 000 × 1.16887 = 1 168.87 USD). In the event that several orders have the same deposit amount, the respective positions will be closed in the order in which they were opened. In this case, if closing this position is insufficient to bring the margin level back up above the minimum threshold, the next position to be closed will be the one on the USDRUB currency pair: (0.30 × 100,000 / 100 = 300 USD). The last position in the queue to be closed is the one on the USDCAD currency pair: (1 × 100,000 / 500 = 200 USD).