The folllowing is an email from Oanda with regard to an increase in margin requirements for Swiss Franc, Swedish Krona and Norwegian Krone currency pairs as mandated by the NFA..
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If you trade CHF, SEK, NOK action may be required.
Effective 6:00 PM EST, January 22, 2015, the National Futures Association (NFA) has imposed a requirement that forex brokerages reduce the available leverage on certain currencies due to the extraordinary market conditions.
As directed by the NFA, OANDA will be changing margin requirements for 3 currencies. The affected currencies are the Swiss Franc, Swedish Krona and Norwegian Krone.
Swiss Franc, Previous Margin Requirement 2%, New margin requirement 5%
Swedish Krona. Previous Margin Requirment 2%, New margin requirement 3%
Norwegian Krone, Previous Margin Requriement 2%, New margin requirement 3%
As a result of this change, accounts with positions in these currencies will show a reduction of margin available at 5:00 PM EST on January 22, 2015. If this margin available falls below the 50% closeout margin specified in your customer account, all open positions in your account will be immediately closed.
IF YOU TRADE THESE PAIRS, we strongly encourage you to review your accountimmediately and close sufficient positions by 5:00 PM EST on January 22, 2015 to ensure you have sufficient margin available to avoid closeout of all your positions
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you
Kind Regards,
The OANDA Client Experience Team
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This may become more of the norm rather than the exception going forward. Individual brokers may also pay more attention to their individual circumstances, and may impose floating margin requirements over riskier weekends from time to time.
