(Please note - this is my chosen methods and what I’ve done and works for me – its not what you have to do!  Everyone is different and will approach the same topic differently.)

(note: complimentary blog post on this topic is How to use margin % as a guide and tool.)

Automation trading is great, but we will still need to take an active role in understanding what are accounts are doing so we can make our money work harder for us. However, this does not have to be hard and requires a few educated tools to have at your disposal to know what to do when you need to do something.

• Understand your Margin Level % and know your drawdown
• Know when you need to start considering your options
• Know what options you have to choose from 
• Decide which is right for you.

So, to help show these steps lets make up a scenario.  The scenario is that your MT4 says the following (this is an example)

• Balance – 3262
• Equity – 1774
• Free Margin  - 1594
• Margin Level (%) 969
• Margin 183
• There are 12 trades on. They are all sell trades with varying LOT sizes
• Drawdown – 1478

- (Please read my blog post on understanding your MT4 app to know what this information means.)

Understand your Margin Level % and know your drawdown
So you wake up in the morning and you see these figure.  How do you interpret them?  Your first key figures to check are:

• Drawdown (about 45% of the balance)
• Margin Level % - 968%

What do these numbers tell me? 
Well first they help me get clear on the health of my account.  The Drawdown tells me that if I closed all the trades right now, that would be our loss, 1478.  It also tells us how much active money is being traded in our account.  The Margin Level % tell us about how much capital we have left for trading. The higher this number the great capital is available. It’s worked out by dividing Equity by Margin.  (1774 / 186 x 100).  

So 968% suggests we have a good amount of capital available to set further trades if we need too.  With a comfortable 968%, I’d be watching my trades now, and just keeping an eye open on what is going on but not taking any action.  

Know when you need to start considering your options
So, let’s say the drawdown deepens and my margin level % falls to 700% and there isn’t a clear direction where the market is going.  I’d start to feel like I just need to pay more attention to this now and start to feel like I need to think about my options.  
This can vary from person to person.  In the beginning I started to consider my options closer to 1000% but with education and a stronger mindset to trading, I’m comfortable at getting to 500% before I consider my options.  This part is up to you! What we are doing at this point, is getting ready for taking action on our automation account (if we need too).  Ideally, we want the automation to take care of itself but it’s important to stay on top of its activity.
Its also that this point that many start to question the intent of the automation and the professional traders and it’s a natural emotional progression because we see activity going one way and we seemingly are going the other but we aren’t the professionals, we don’t see what they see. 

Know what options you have to choose from
So, our margin Level % is falling.  Our balance is also falling – things look concerning!!  You are not sure what the outcome is going to be, and you certainly don’t what a margin call on your hands. So what options are open to you.

a) You can add more capital.  A quick and simple activity to help raise your margin level % and give you more space.  To protect your account raising your margin level % is a good option for you.

b) You can close a trade.  I’ve done this move because I didn’t want to add more capital and chose to take a loss on an old trade which I knew would take ages to get back too.  Doing this raised my margin level % and helped my account.   Which trade to close depends on several factors but when I was deciding I was prepared to sacrifice old trades so I looked at them and you could take out a higher LOT size trade with a small loss and help release more margin level %.  Higher LOT sizes hold more margin so another useful option when considering closing trades.   You can close more than one trade if you want. Its just takes some decision making on your side.

c) Reduce your overall risk by reducing your LOT size.   This is also an easy adjustment to make but its one I tend not to choose but I share it as an option.  You see with automated trading the likelihood of going into a grid strategy is higher, so we use the larger LOT sizes to help us cover any loss of small lot size trades.  When you see it in action, its pretty cool!  Large lot sizes are a short-term goal to help accumulate profit to cover loss of other trades and to at least break even or close in a profit.   I’ve seen a number of grid strategies come into play and I’ve always broken even or come out with a profit.  It feels like a cleanse when you see a load of trades close on your account! You are then excited for the next chapter of trading.

d) If you have another trading account – transfer additional money (in the short term) from it if the margin level % on that account is healthy and comfortably over 1000% and you are not seeing any heavy market changes in the short term.  I have moved money between accounts when margin on one account was low.  Its quick and the transfer is immediate.  You can always put it back once the margin level % releases back to a healthy level again

Decide which is right for you.
My commentary above are just options.  You can do whatever you feel is right for you, but these are options that have worked nicely for me and helped me deal with the couple of moments of automated trading where you need to take a bit more interest in your account and be prepared. I’ve used 3 of these options.  I hope to discover more as I get better at this.  Ultimately it helps the ‘emotional’ part of your trading journey.

Good Luck.
​(The commentary I write is not financial advice, it is meant to help others with their self knowledge and growth).

This is a question I get asked often because it does puzzles people in the beginning.  The new starter sees a large blue profit number and they are thinking ‘why isn’t this trade being closed’?  It is very frustrating for the beginner especially when they are eager to make profit and start to see the results they know others have benefited from.   So Why does this happen?

1.  The first point to note is your trades you have open on MT4 are a ‘copy’ of the Master account for the automated trading service you are using.   The Master account is running the trades and doing all the activities. Your account is copying all that activity.  So as the Master account sets new trades, your account will copy that. When the Master account closes a trade, your account will close a trader. 
2. The second point is when you first start trading you will inherit all existing trades that are open on the Master account but you will get the current entry price for that trade which will be different to the opening price of the Master account.  This can mean that when this trade starts to trend in a profitable direction, you start to see large profits and wonder why the trade doesn’t close.  This is because that even though you might see the trade as a profit on your account. On the Master account this could be a current loss and it needs to get back to its initial entry price in order to breakeven and start earning a profit. 

So for example.  I have two EURUSD trades that were opened on my account back in August 2020 at a price of 1.17978.  Back at the end of March 2021 these trades went into profit for me and naturally you think, these should close.  However, these EURUSD’s were opened on the master account on a different date and a different price.  Eg.  maybe 1.1300 as the Take Profit target is 1.1200.  So for the Master account a currency price of 1.1798 means this trade is in loss and if it closed on the Master account it would be a large loss so the trade remains open until the initial entry price is reached or the target profit is reached. This means as your account is mirror a master account, trades will not close they will remain open. 
 
What can you do?
The primary note here is always happens at the beginning of a new trader's journey and once into the swing of daily trading, this activity is gone.  It only applies at the beginning.  

1.  You can leave the automation to do its job and if the master account reaches its target the trades will close and you will receive a nice profit for having that trade at a better entry price which is just great for your account.
2. Ask your trading support person what trade are old and could any of them be closed as soon as they go into profit because they are old.  You can close trades like this and take the profit.  Its just knowing which ones are the old ones which you can close yourself.

​
If you need anymore guidance on this then let me know!
​The commentary I write is not financial advice, it is meant to help others with their self knowledge and growth.

IX Global doesn't touch your broker account, the only thing connected is the automation service so you can withdraw and deposit as and when you want.    What you earn in your trading account is yours and you deposit and withdraw from your broker account as you like.

However to benefit from the opportunity to increase your lot size and compound interest -it's best to keep all your equity in your broker account. If you do withdraw try to limit it to about 30% but really its up to you!   

Yes you can increase or decrease lot size.  eg.  if you start with 1000 then the lot size is set at 0.01 and when your equity rises to 2000 then you can increase to 0.02.  As the equity in your account increases you can increase your lot size.

If you withdraw funds from your account then it is important to decrease your lot size too.  This ensures your capital is managed with the appropriate leverage and you are adhering to good risk management guidelines.

Risk management is an important pillar in trading and its important that one understands this.  Alot of people lose money with forex trading because they have over leveraged their trading account and are risking too much of their capital on trades.

I've seen this a number of times now when people send me their screen shots of their MT4 app and its very upsetting to see this.  When you don't adhere to proper risk parameters many find themselves where their trading accounts just bleed money.  If you are risk averse then this is also an important pillar to learn.

Scalping can be very profitable for traders who decide to use it as a primary strategy, or even those who use it to supplement other types of trading. Adhering to the strict exit strategy is the key to making small profits compound into large gains.  The Trader sets a trade to earn a few pips and then take the profit.  Its a common strategy within an automated trading service too.

With IX Global's automated trading service it doesn't recommend running automtion and manual trading in the same account.  This is because with both running you wouldn't have enough equity to accomodate the automated strategies and place your own trades.  You will also put your capital at higher risk and overleverage your account.

If you want to scalp trades its recommend you create your own account and set about running manual trades you can scalp.

This question happens a lot and it stems from those who are thinking about starting with a small investment of say US$1000 - US$2000 account.  

I started with a small account too and like this question i did wonder if the fees were justified.  With some research I concluded that yes the fees was justified and I would still start with a smaller account.

Here's my answer:-

a) I'm paying for access to knowledge, experience, their time and insight.
​If I had been trading on my own from January I believe that I wouldn't have made the returns I would have made. I would have cleaned out my intitial investment and walked away saying 'I can't trade'.     I would have wasted my investment.

Instead I looked at the membership fee as the price I pay for using the services of an automated trading service and the use of professional traders who do this on a daily basis. Their experience, insight and skills out ways me completely.   It would take me years and spending hours reading and learning charts to even get close to what they can do.  So for me, that US$180 pays for that experience I couldn't achieve in the short term.  Plus its not just one automated account you get, its two  so US$90 per account to generate an income on my savings is just brillant.

I started trading with at US$2K account and each month I have had consistent growth that would have only been achieveable if I had paid for their service to do that.  So for me I see it like paying for  an actiivty now that will benefit me in the long run and with time that cost of the fees will be outweighed.  

b) This is a long term solution not a short term 'get rich quick scheme'

How does US$180 equate over the longer term.  Lets good at some hypothetical numbers and time periods.

Let say you want to start your account with US$3000.  You have seen that the current return on growth has been around 5% per month.  Your membership costs US$180 per month.  

On month 1 this doesn’t add up.  That doesn’t work at all and makes no sense in the very short term.

• Initial balance:  US$3000
• Monthly growth rate: 5%  (this is based on our current monthly growth)
• Initial term: 1 months 
• Membership is US$180 per month 
• Investment balance increases from 3000 to 3150
• 1st month US$3150 – 180 = US$2970
• On a US$3000 account at 5% growth per month, that means you will earn US$150 which isn’t enough to cover the membership.

But let’s look at its longer term. 

Let’s look at it over the first 12 months and then 5 years.  We will also benefit from the powers of compound interest which is another useful tool in income generation.

Using the compound calculator and these numbers

First year term

• Initial balance:  US$3000
• Monthly growth rate: 5%
• Initial term: 12 months
• Membership is US$180 per month (US$2160 per year)
• Investment balance increases from 3000 to 5387  (use the compound interest calculator for this)
• Profit over the first year is US$3227

Now 5 year term

• Initial balance:  US$3000
• Monthly growth rate: 5%
• Initial term: 60 months
• Membership is US$180 per month (US$10,800 per year)
• Investment balance increases from 3000 to 56037  (use the compound interest calculator for this)
• Profit over the five years is US$45,237

So using these hypothetical numbers the long term effects of forex automation and compound interest are beneficial and thus makes your monthly investment in your own financial education and your our source of wealth generation more feasible.   Please note the % growth could be less or more over the time frame, but forex trading is a long-term investment and should be looked at over a longer time frame than a day to day activity. In this hypothetical situation I haven’t considered LOT sizes either which would increase your portfolio too.
tfolio too.