Free tool

Margin Call

In the Margin Call game you pick your leverage and try to survive 30 volatile ticks without being liquidated. More leverage means more potential profit, or a total loss. A vivid lesson in the real risk of leverage.

Free, no sign-up, runs in your browser. For illustration only; not investment advice.

⚠️ Margin Call

Pick your leverage and survive 30 volatile ticks without getting liquidated. More leverage means bigger potential gains, but also a much faster route to a total loss.

Equity: 100 Tick: 0/30 Status: ready

Leverage does not improve your odds; it shrinks the distance to liquidation. That is where many traders fail.

Read more: Forex-Trading: was wirklich funktioniert (German) · Risk of Ruin berechnen: die Kennzahl, die niemand nutzt (German)

This is one of 25 free trading calculators and games. Want models like this on your own data, with real backtests and a live connection?

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You start with equity of 100 in your account currency and pick a leverage between 1× and 50×. On each tick the price moves at random by up to about 2% up or down, and your equity moves by roughly that change times your leverage: at 10×, a 1% move changes your equity by about 10%. If equity falls to 5 or less, the position is liquidated and the game ends. Get through all 30 ticks and you have survived. The thin horizontal line marks your starting equity of 100.

On a real margin account, a price move of about 1 ÷ leverage against you is enough to wipe out your equity: roughly 10% at 10×, 2% at 50×. Brokers and exchanges usually liquidate even earlier, at the maintenance margin, and fees, funding costs and price gaps make it worse. One game says little. Play several times at the same setting and look at how often it ends in liquidation; that frequency, not a single lucky run, is the lesson.