BERITA FOREX

A major war escalation is unfolding in the Middle East, as tensions erupted on both sides of the Arabian Peninsula on Tuesday. In the Persian Gulf, an attempted IRGC attack against a US Navy aircraft carrier operating in the region led to a retaliatory strike against multiple Iranian tankers near Kharg Island. The counterstrike sank one tanker and left two more permanently disabled, and Iran has threatened a retaliation of its own against oil tanker crews ‘in the areas around the ports of Kuwait and Bahrain’. The events that unfolded in the Red Sea meanwhile are, if anything, even worse. Houthi rebels launched a barrage of missiles and drones against four different cities across Saudi Arabia, injuring over 70 people, including women and children, according to military officials. Yesterday’s attack marks the largest offensive observed in several months and Saudi forces are already in the midst of mustering a response aimed at Yemeni territories. Both sides of the conflict are now in danger of entering an endless spiral of escalation and any prospect of peace seems further removed than ever. The bells of war sounded throughout financial markets, striking fear among investors and economists alike. The Brent Crude benchmark rose to within a hair’s breadth of $100 per barrel on the November contract on Tuesday and remains perilously close to three figures as of this morning. Precious metals retreated to the shadows, as gold fell over 1% to $4,355 per ounce and silver edged back down to $65. It was rough day for the Dow Jones, which lost over 600 points during yesterday’s session as tit-for-tat trade war antics between the US and Canada took their toll on the index. The story was somewhat different in cryptocurrencies however, where Bitcoin once again showed a surprising degree of resilience, forfeiting only a few hundred dollars over the course of the day. The newfound maturity in crypto markets is worth keeping an eye on as time progresses, particularly in light of a potentially more favourable regulatory landscape just around the corner. The Japanese yen continued its ascent over the last two days, following on from last week’s blistering performance. Last night, purchasing a US dollar required a mere 154 yen, down from almost 164 at the end of July. The yen is now at a seven-month high against the greenback – something that would have been inconceivable just a few weeks ago. The Bank of Japan has been aggressively signalling that it intends to raise the interest rate on its currency at an accelerated rate and economists are confidently predicting a 25-bps rate hike to 1.25% during next week’s scheduled meeting. The heavily priced-in decision will arrive only three months after the last rate hike carried out in June, but shockingly, may not be the final adjustment of the year. Many are now predicting a third rate hike before 2027, or at the very least a shortened normalisation period for the yen, hence the dramatic surge observed over the last week or so. Another factor currently playing out is the systematic dismantling of leveraged short positions as the yen gains strength. With trillions of yen in bearish bets still in the place, a self-reinforcing short unwind is very much a possibility. A healthier yen is largely beneficial to everyone. From Japanese consumers to the Bank of Japan itself, a stronger currency gives both more breathing room. A controlled normalisation of the yen also safely disarms the possibility of an explosive carry trade unwind at a later date, settling US and even global equities. The benefits also spread to the US Treasury, which will no longer be as concerned with Japan having to dump huge amounts of US treasuries in an emergency. USDJPY fell sharply again earlier this morning, with the pair pushing towards 153. #IRAN #USDJPY #YEN About the Author Lawrence J. came from a strong technical and engineering background before pivoting into a more financial role later on in his career. Always interested in international finance, Lawrence is experienced in both traditional markets as well as the emerging crypto markets. He now serves as the financial writer for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment.

You have positions open, and the margin level percentage at the bottom of your platform keeps sliding. Nobody told you at what number things actually go wrong, or whether the right move is to act now or sit still. That uncertainty is the problem this article removes: how to calculate the percentage, what it means, what counts as safe, what happens when the key levels break, where to find it on MT4 and MT5, and how to pull it back into the safe zone. Margin level is your account's equity relative to used margin, expressed as a percentage: equity divided by used margin, times 100. Your broker reads this number to decide whether you can open new trades, when you receive a warning, and when positions are force-closed. The higher the percentage, the more buffer your account has. If you have never watched the number move, open a small position on a demo account and leave the Trade tab visible for an afternoon while the floating profit and loss pulls it around. Ready to keep your own margin level in the safe zone? The margin level formula takes two numbers you already have and turns them into one percentage: Margin level = Equity ÷ Used margin × 100 The calculation runs as a chain, and each link depends on the one before it. One worked account carries through this whole article, so the figures below are illustrative but consistent. Step 1: work out the required margin for the trade. Buying 1 standard lot of GBP/USD means controlling £100,000 of notional value at 1:30 leverage. Required margin = £100,000 ÷ 30 = £3,333.33 Step 2: add up the required margin of every open position. With this single trade open, used margin is £3,333.33. Step 3: take your current equity. The account started at £10,000; with the position 250 pips underwater at an illustrative £8 per pip, the floating loss is £2,000 and equity sits at £8,000. Step 4: substitute into the formula. Margin level = £8,000 ÷ £3,333.33 × 100 = 240% A quirk worth knowing: with no positions open there is no used margin, so the platform shows zero or nothing at all depending on the terminal. Nothing is wrong there; the formula has no denominator yet. Margin level in forex is the percentage of account equity relative to used margin, and it measures one thing: how much buffer stands between your account and your broker's intervention lines. A reading of 240% means equity covers the locked deposit 2.4 times over. The lower the percentage falls, the closer the account moves to the warning line and, below that, the stop out line. The number never sits still. Every tick of price changes your floating profit or loss, floating profit or loss changes equity, and equity changes the margin level. Your positions can stay untouched all day while the market moves the percentage for you. On the way down it passes a series of gates: buffer comfortable, buffer shrinking, too little free margin for new trades, warning notification, forced closing. At the early gates every choice is still open. At the last one the system is choosing for you. Margin level meaning gets muddled because four account terms travel together. The table separates them. Balance ignores your open trades entirely, which is why an account can show a healthy balance while the margin level is collapsing. Equity is the honest number, used margin is the locked one, and margin level is the ratio the broker watches. The wider basics of margin and equity sit in our margin guide. Read more：What Is Margin in Forex Trading and How to Use It? Here is the same account played all the way to the end. One position, 1 lot of GBP/USD, used margin fixed at £3,333, and a market that keeps going the wrong way. The warning line in this example sits at the common setting of 100% and the stop out at 50%; both vary by broker. Follow the slide in pips. A move of 250 pips against the position costs £2,000 and drops the level from 300% to 240%. Uncomfortable, nothing more. At roughly 750 pips the floating loss reaches £6,000, equity is down to £4,000, and the free margin left over is about £667. Not enough to open anything meaningful. Around 833 pips, equity exactly matches used margin and the platform issues the margin call. If the slide continues to roughly 1,042 pips, equity is half the used margin and the broker starts closing the position at market. Every row is the same formula from the calculation section with one number changed. A caveat: when price gaps over a weekend or a news release, the level can jump from the caution zone straight through the warning line without pausing at it, and no notification arrives in time to act on. There is no single number that fits every account, because a safe margin level shifts with leverage, strategy and market conditions. What a scalper on high leverage can tolerate for an hour would keep a swing trader awake for a week. That said, traders work with reference zones, and the bands below are a widely used starting point. Why does the same percentage mean different things to different traders? Because the speed of burn differs. A high-leverage position turns a routine 50-pip swing into a large equity move, so a 250% reading can decay in minutes. A small position on low leverage might drift between 400% and 380% all week. The percentage tells you the distance to the lines; your leverage decides how fast that distance closes. The rule that actually protects you is one you set in advance: write your own minimum tolerable level into your trading plan, and when the number touches it, execute the action you agreed with yourself. A common version is a personal floor well above the broker's lines, say 200%, paired with one fixed response such as cutting position size the same day. Read more：What Is Leverage in Forex and How Much Should You Use? The margin call level and the stop out level are two separate lines, and the difference is who acts. The margin call is a notification: your broker tells you the buffer is nearly gone and asks you to add funds or reduce positions. The stop out is an action: the system closes your positions for you without asking. A stop out is the automatic closing of open positions by the broker once the margin level falls to a preset floor. It exists to stop a losing account from falling below zero. Both lines are broker-dependent, so check your own account's contract terms rather than assuming the common settings. For retail CFD accounts in Europe, regulators standardised the close-out rule at 50% of required margin under the ESMA product intervention measures. The full playbook for staying clear of the warning line lives in our margin call guide. Read more：What is a margin call? 5 tips for UK traders to avoid it Everything that lifts the margin level works on one side of the formula or the other: push equity up, or pull used margin down. Four moves cover almost every situation. A deposit lifts equity directly while the denominator stays put. It is the fastest of the four, and the only one that needs no market decision, but it calls on money from outside the account. A partial close releases used margin and locks in part of the loss. The denominator shrinks, the percentage recovers, and no fresh money is involved. Smaller new positions are the preventive move. The same market swing uses up far less headroom when each trade locks less margin, which keeps the whole problem from starting. Stacking positions in one direction inflates the floating loss and the used margin at the same time, so the ratio deteriorates from both ends. When the level is falling, this is the first habit to stop. The two rescue moves carry very different price tags. Take the account at the deep-loss snapshot: equity £4,000, used margin £3,333, level 120%. Restoring 300% by deposit means bringing equity back to £10,000, which costs £6,000 of fresh money while the full position stays at risk. Closing half the position instead releases £1,667 of margin without a penny deposited; the cost is crystallising £3,000 of the loss. Deposit route: £10,000 ÷ £3,333.33 × 100 = 300% Partial close route: £4,000 ÷ £1,666.67 × 100 = 240% The deposit keeps the full position running with more money committed; the partial close needs no new money and accepts part of the loss instead. Margin level in trading platforms lives on the account summary row, and the value only appears while positions are open. On MT4: On MT5: On the mobile apps the figure sits in the account information block at the top of the Trade screen. Wherever you read it, check the number at the start of the session rather than waiting for the platform to warn you. Read more：MT4 and MT5 Trading Platforms Put a real margin level on your own screen: When the level falls through the key lines, the consequences arrive in a fixed order: Every item on that list can be avoided before it triggers, using the four moves in the section above. Margin level is a risk-management percentage that shows the health of a trading account by comparing total equity to the used margin. The number moves in real time with floating profit and loss, so it changes even while your positions stay untouched. The four-term table shows how it relates to balance, equity and used margin. A healthy margin level in trading is generally kept above 200%, and many traders aim for 300% to 500% of headroom to absorb normal market swings, while a drop to 100% usually triggers a margin call. The safe value shifts with leverage and strategy, so treat the zone table as a starting point for your own floor. The margin level formula is the ratio of your account equity to your used margin, expressed as a percentage: Margin Level = (Equity / Used Margin) x 100%. With £8,000 of equity against £3,333.33 of used margin, the level is 240%. No, margin and leverage are not the same thing, though they work together closely when you trade. Leverage sets how large a position you can open, margin is the money locked to hold it, and margin level is the percentage measuring account health. The higher the leverage, the faster the level falls in the same move. It usually means no positions are open and no margin is in use, so the platform shows zero or a blank field. The account is fine; the formula simply has no denominator until a position opens. In business accounting the word means profit margin, the share of revenue left after direct costs. In forex it is different: your margin is the deposit locked by your open positions, and it sits in the platform's account row right next to the margin level percentage. From here you have the full toolkit: the formula, the gates the percentage passes on its way down, one account played from 300% to a stop out, the reference zones, the two broker lines, the four moves that raise the number, and where it lives on MT4 and MT5. If you keep one thing, keep this: write your minimum tolerable level into your trading plan and act the moment it is touched. Then check the number at the start of every session, before the charts. The RADEX MARKETS editorial team consists of seasoned financial professionals and market observers. Dedicated to delivering objective market summaries, macroeconomic insights, and educational content, the team strives to keep traders well-informed in a fast-paced financial environment. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment. Deeper into margin: Related concepts:

On the 21st of September 2026, Nike will be kicked out of the S&P 100 after an 18-year stint, following a disastrous streak on the New York Stock Exchange. The famous shoemaker, founded in Oregon back in 1964, first went public in 1980 under the ticker NKE. Years of consistent growth would eventually see the company invited into the esteemed S&P 100 club in the year 2008. Unfortunately, in just two short weeks, its membership within the prestigious index will come to an end. The S&P 100, which actually includes 101 companies because of Google being difficult (GOOG & GOOGL), is a hand-selected index of the most established companies within the wider S&P 500. Far from simply grouping the 100 largest companies by market cap, the S&P 100 accounts for sector balance and financial durability. This ensures that the index represents a broader spectrum of the stock market overall, while remaining somewhat stable over time. The committee responsible for such decisions rebalances the index four times per year and will typically swap out no more than 1-2 companies per quarter. The current round is an outlier in that four different names are facing the chop: Nike (NKE), Colgate-Palmolive (CL), Honeywell Aerospace (HONA), and Simon Property Group (SPG), to be replaced by Dell Technologies (DELL), Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Arista Networks (ANET), and SanDisk (SNDK). A rotation of eight different companies certainly makes the September rebalancing operation one of the more impactful in recent times, but the demotion of Nike adds an element of nostalgia to the event. Nike’s catastrophic performance on Wall Street over the past few years has forced the committee to reevaluate the company’s position within the index. The chart speaks for itself: from a high of $179 per share in November 2021 to a 12-year low of $38 as of yesterday evening – a 78% drop that has erased $200 billion in market capitalisation. So why has NKE fallen so precipitously? There are a few different answers, but the main point that sticks out is the company’s attempt to pivot away from retail floor space to prioritise its digital stores. With Nike gone from many shelves, competitors quickly seized the empty space and filled the vacant aisles with their own products. As the Covid lockdowns wound down around the world, consumers returned to physical shops only to find that Nike was conspicuously absent. To make matters worse, the innovation gap between Nike and its rivals has continued to widen, gradually weakening the competitive moat that the company previously enjoyed. Another major culprit is the downturn in the Chinese market, which saw revenue fall by 30% between 2021 and 2026. Rather than rely on local marketing teams to properly gauge sentiment within the target audience, Nike maintained a centrally controlled decision-making structure, which utterly failed to resonate with Chinese consumers. Other comparable brands avoided the same fate thanks to more flexible approaches, which resulted in more widely received merchandise. The third, and more controversial, reason is that the brand may have focused too narrowly on certain demographics, putting off large swathes of the general population in the process. Targeted advertisement campaigns over the last decade did not sit well with large parts of the public, splitting different groups along political and cultural lines and alienating formerly loyal consumer bases. For a company that makes shoes and other sports apparel, brand image is everything. Shunning the majority was a controversial strategy that the current management openly admits was a mistake. Former CEO Elliott Hill retired from Nike in 2020, but the 32-year veteran at the company was brought back out of retirement in 2024 to address many of the problems discussed above. The new management freely acknowledge that the previous attempt at demographic sorting damaged the brand and is currently attempting to reorient the company back to its roots; a process that may take many years to see through to fruition. It is worth looking again at the companies being welcomed into the S&P 100 index: Dell, Palo Alto, Arista and SanDisk. All four are tech companies. All four are intimately connected to the AI sector. Nike’s symbolic fall from grace distracts from a potentially more interesting facet of the story: that US markets are increasingly dominated by the tech sector. Information technology alone now accounts for 44% of the S&P 100 index by market cap weight. For the S&P 500, the figure falls only slightly to 38%. For context, in 1990, the figure was roughly 7%. #S&P100 #NIKE

Wall Street received quite the surprise last Friday in the form of a bombshell NFP report, which indicated a whopping 162,000 new jobs added to the US economy in August, demolishing expectations of just 56,000. Beyond the headline figure, revisions to the June and July figures swelled prior estimates by a combined 55,000 jobs. There was more solid news to be found on the joblessness side, where the headline unemployment rate remained steady at 4.1%, but more importantly the broader U-6 rate dropped from 8% to 7.7%. The labour force participation rate also ticked up slightly to 61.6%, meaning the fall in unemployment is not simply due to people giving up on finding work. All-in-all, the report was unusually strong, so much so that the implied odds of a rate hike next week have moderately increased from 50% to around 60%, while bond yields finished the session noticeably higher. For all the movement behind the scenes, markets were unflustered by the report. The US dollar made marginal gains as currency markets digested the news, but the DXY remains somewhat off the 100 point threshold. US equities showed minor signs of weakness, as did precious metals, leaving gold and silver roughly 1% down by the end of the day. Bitcoin shied away from new highs but clung on to $80,000 per coin throughout the weekend and into this morning. Even oil prices have showed very little motivation in going anywhere over the last few sessions, with the Brent Crude benchmark stubbornly hovering around $96 per barrel but venturing no further towards three-figure territory. Everyone is waiting for the next catalyst to jolt markets into action; they may have to wait a little longer. Traders can expect very thin order books going into today’s session due to Canadian and US stock exchanges being closed for Labour Day. Holidays aside, the economic calendar will not get spicy until much later in the week, starting with an interest rate decision from the European Central Bank on Thursday, which is expected to result in a 25-bps hike for the euro. Inflation is proving just as sticky in the common currency area, and some analysts are now predicting that the ECB will enact two rate hikes before the end of the year. In the first of two inflation readings on the US economy, Thursday will also see the publication of the August PPI figures, which are forecast to show a 0.3% increase in producer prices month-over-month. The bigger story of the week will arrive a day later with the release of the latest CPI data, which has been notoriously difficult to predict in recent months. A strong labour market coupled with high inflation will seal the deal for a rate hike next week, and the first condition has already been met. The latest UK GDP figures will also materialise on Friday, which may play into expectations for the Bank of England’s interest rate decision next week. Friday’s US inflation reading will be the major event of the week, which may leave many traders sitting idle until the pivotal moment arrives, particularly with market closures affecting North American markets today. On the earnings front, Oracle (ORCL) is the only company of note, reporting after the bell on Thursday. The company is down 18% year-to-date, and investors have yet to receive a convincing answer as to whether the software giant’s massive AI expenditures are translating into cloud revenue growth. #CPI #NFP #INFLATION

For anyone wondering why assets rose across the board on Thursday, look no further than Governor Christopher Waller. In an interview with Reuters yesterday morning, the Federal Reserve board member expressed confidence in current US inflation trends and even mentioned voting in favour of a rate hold during the next FOMC meeting. Waller claimed that the Fed is ‘finally seeing some signs of disinflation’, meaning that the rate of inflation, while still positive, appears to be slowing down. In one of the most forward-looking statements to date, the governor admitted that the Fed could afford to ‘give disinflation a chance’, adding ‘we can wait one meeting’. Waller even went as far as to say that underlying trends were actually ‘better than the core numbers suggest’, noting that the three-month annualised core inflation rate had dropped from 4.76% in February to 3.05% in July. The comments are somewhat in opposition to Kevin Warsh’s statements from last Friday’s speech at Jackson Hole, in which the Fed Chairman said that underlying trends had not meaningfully improved. The implied odds of a rate hike on the 16th of September immediately shifted following the interview, falling to around 50% compared to 64% before the segment was published. Currencies also reacted quickly to the change in expectations, causing the dollar currency index to lose over half a percent, dragging the DXY down to 99 points. Interestingly, the biggest major currency pair movement was in the yen, which gained almost 2% against the greenback on Thursday, lowering USDJPY down to the 155 range, the lowest rate in a month. Bank of Japan board member Hajime Takata came out with an equally unexpected statement on Wednesday, during which he claimed that the central bank needed to move nimbly to raise interest rates in order to combat persistent inflation risks within the island economy. While the Fed’s next decision is scheduled for the 16th of September, the BoJ will follow with its own decision just two days later on the 18th. The back-to-back rate calls, crammed into a narrow 48-hour window, are creating the perfect storm for the highly significant currency pair. Adding even more fuel to the fire, the Bank of England decision lies snugly between both. The prospect of not-so-high interest rates on the dollar sent precious metals upwards yesterday, with gold punching up to $4,473 per ounce and silver reaching up to $67. Cryptocurrencies were also keen on the change in sentiment, as Bitcoin pumped straight back up to $81,000 per coin, from just $77,000 earlier in the session. US stocks were similarly impressed, lifting both the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq-100 1.2% higher by the end of the day, while the S&P 500 lagged a little behind with a 1.1% gain. With no real developments coming out of the Iranian conflict, market participants will have their eyes firmly trained on the upcoming NFP release. A modest 56k jobs are expected, with unemployment remaining at 4.1%, fitting in with the accepted ‘low fire, low hire’ narrative currently pervading the US labour market. #FED #WALLER #NFP

On Wednesday, Chevron (CVX) announced that it will invest $7 billion across its Venezuelan joint ventures in a bid to double oil production to 600,000 barrels per day over the next five years. Chevron, which first started operating in Venezuela all the way back in 1923, is the only major US oil company still active in the South American nation. Working hand-in-hand with state enterprise Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., Chevron currently exploits the Orinoco Belt and Zulia State oil fields, located in Central and Western Venezuela, respectively. As part of the new arrangement, Chevron has been assigned additional acreage in the Orinoco Belt, where the American giant is already well established, possessing a large infrastructure base of pipelines and refining facilities. The new oil fields, designated Carabobo-1 and Carabobo-2-South-A, will provide the new crude oil, which can be drawn out of the ground for under $20 per barrel, according to the company. The timing of the disclosure is striking, to say the least, arriving only a few days after President Trump announced a separate deal that would give US-backed private operators access to vast swathes of Venezuelan oil fields. The bilateral deal between the US and Venezuela is far greater in scope, but many details of the arrangement have yet to emerge. The United States has apparently been granted 100-year concessions to operate in 17 separate oil fields, which together account for 65 billion barrels of oil. To put the figure in context, such volumes represent 20% of Venezuela’s total proven reserves, which in turn represent 17% of the entire world’s proven crude oil reserves. The agreement will operate as a joint partnership between the US government and North American Blue Energy Partners (NABEP), a large private energy company controlled by the prominent Betancourt family. In terms of ownership, the Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital holds a 35% equity stake, while the US government maintains veto power over appointments to the board of directors and ensures that the entire structure operates under US court jurisdiction. For anyone wondering what on earth the Office of Strategic Capital is, it was established in 2022 and is essentially the investment arm of the Pentagon. The partnership is expected to invest $100 billion to rebuild and scale up Venezuela’s decaying energy infrastructure, but exactly where this sum of money will come from is one of the fuzzier elements of the arrangement. NABEP estimates that production will ramp up to over 1 million barrels per day once everything is in full swing. The US will then have a guaranteed right to purchase 20% of all the oil produced by NABEP at production cost, while holding the right of first refusal to buy the remaining 80% in emergency situations. This 20% is expected to replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve back in the United States. One of the fascinating, but somewhat overlooked points about the new deal is that of the seventeen oil fields in question, five were previously exploited by Chinese firms, while one was operated by a Russian company. This becomes more interesting when taken together with reports that Venezuela is considering leaving OPEC. The situation becomes more interesting still when taking into account rumours that Venezuela could abandon its currency, the bolivar, in favour of the US dollar. Whether the latter eventualities materialise or not, the display of hard power is hard to ignore. The broader picture is becoming increasingly clear. Operation ‘Absolute Resolve’, carried out on the 3rd of January this year, was a clinically precise manoeuvre that resulted in the successful capture and extraction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Nine months later, the operation is looking less like an isolated event and more like the opening chapter in a longer-term play. The US has seemingly secured a golden stake in over 3% of the world’s known crude oil reserves, while pushing out its main rivals in the process. In theory anyway. The reality on the ground may prove more frustrating. Venezuela is not an easy country in which to do business, at least not in this century. Legal battles aside, the $100 billion investment pledge will prove crucial to get the ball rolling and so far, it is not obvious who will foot the bill. #CHEVRON #VENEZUELA #OIL About the Author Lawrence J. came from a strong technical and engineering background before pivoting into a more financial role later on in his career. Always interested in international finance, Lawrence is experienced in both traditional markets as well as the emerging crypto markets. He now serves as the financial writer for RADEX MARKETS. Reviewed by RADEX MARKETS Risk Warning: Trading derivatives and leveraged products carries a high level of risk, including the risk of losing substantially more than your initial investment.