Margin can be regarded as the actual margin required to maintain the open position. This is not an expense or transaction cost, but a part of the net account value is set aside and allocated as a margin deposit. FXCM's margin requirement (per lot 10K) is determined by a certain proportion of nominal trading volume plus a small amount of buffer. The purpose of adding buffers is to help reduce daily/weekly fluctuations.

FXCM provides flexible leverage for foreign exchange trading accounts, and the maximum leverage ratio is about 200: 1. Highly available leverage is widely welcomed by many traders in the foreign exchange market. Most FXCM traders use the default leverage (determined by the default margin setting), but you can customize the leverage ratio for trading at will.