Retail Forex brokers continue to line up ways to protect themselves against market volatility before the June 23rd Brexit referendum. Increasing the required client margin is one of the easiest "?temporary changes" to introduce and that is what many Forex providers are doing just that.
In addition to major retail brokers and banks such as Saxo, Oanda and FXCM that already put higher margin requirements into place, more and more Forex service providers are making the move. Forex.com, FxPro, RoboForex, HotForex, FxOpen, and Orbex have notified their clients of the margin increase and ETX Capital is moving in the same direction.
At Forex.com, all GBP pairs and UK indices will pay margin rates of 3%, starting after the market close on 17 June which is six times higher the current rates. In addition, minimum margin rates for EUR pairs and indices, as well as for US indices will be doubled to 1% . Additional increased margins may be implemented if market in case of extreme volatility.
After the market close on 17 June until market close on 24 June, FxPro will increase the margins on all EUR pairs (except GBP/EUR) to 1%, as well as on European index and share instruments to 5% and 15%, respectively. GBP pairs have been split into three sub-categories, which will have different margins.
RoboForex will, at the market opening on 20 June until 24 June, switch to close-only mode for all GBP instruments on the MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5) trading platforms, which means that no new positions with such instruments will be possible. Additional changes will also be put into effect.
It looks like Orbex is taking maximum precaution and starting June 16th, will offer leverage of 25:1 for the GBP/EUR pair and 100:1 for all other symbols, which means that margins will be at 4% for all GBP and EUR pairs and at 1% for all others. On June 20th, the margin level stop out will be set at 50%.