What the IC Markets Calculator Shows a Trader in the Philippines

Why the numbers stay in dollars, not pesos

IC Markets accounts can be opened in exactly 10 base currencies - USD, AUD, EUR, GBP, SGD, NZD, JPY, CHF, HKD and CAD - and PHP is not among them. That means every margin figure, pip value and Swap Free holding fee this calculator produces is expressed in one of those 10 currencies, most commonly USD for a Philippine-based account. Turning that figure into pesos is a step the trader has to do themselves, using whatever rate their own bank or card issuer applies at the time of deposit or withdrawal - IC Markets does not publish a PHP conversion rate anywhere in its fee schedule.

• Margin is tiered by volume, not flat: IC Markets' published USDCHF example runs 1:5000 leverage for the first 0-25 lots, drops to 1:3000 between 25 and 50 lots, and falls to 1:1000 above 50 lots on MetaTrader; cTrader leverage caps at 1:1000 throughout, and stop-out sits at 50% on every account type.
• Pip value is calculated per lot and per instrument, then converted into whichever of the 10 available base currencies the account is opened in - USD, AUD, EUR, GBP, SGD, NZD, JPY, CHF, HKD or CAD - and the Philippine peso is not one of them, so a result is never generated in PHP.
• The Swap Free holding fee replaces the overnight swap with a fixed per-lot, per-night charge on Raw Spread and Standard accounts across MT4, MT5 and cTrader, covering 90+ instruments; published examples include XAUUSD USD 62, EURUSD USD 11, US30 USD 25, BTCUSD USD 41.85, GBPCHF USD 26, GBPJPY USD 16, AUDCAD USD 9, XAGUSD USD 9 and EURCHF USD 15 per lot per night, and IC Markets can remove Swap Free status from an account without giving a reason.
• Because MT4/MT5 pricing servers run on Equinix NY4 in New York, tier breakpoints and the daily fee rollover are timed to US Eastern time (EST, UTC-5, or EDT, UTC-4), not to Manila time (UTC+8, no daylight saving) - Manila runs 13 hours ahead of New York during EST and 12 hours ahead during EDT.
• Every calculator output - margin required, pip value, or Swap Free holding fee - comes back in USD or one of the other 9 base currencies listed above; converting that figure into Philippine pesos is left to the trader's own bank or card provider, since IC Markets does not publish a PHP conversion rate.
• This page is independent, third-party content about IC Markets and is not published by the broker; CFD trading carries a high risk of losing money, so any margin, pip value or fee figure below should be treated as an illustration, not a guarantee of trading outcomes.

This also matters for timing: the margin tiers and the Swap Free overnight fee reset according to the MT4/MT5 pricing servers in New York (Equinix NY4), not Manila time. With Manila (UTC+8, no daylight saving) running 12-13 hours ahead of New York depending on US daylight saving, a Philippine trader checking the calculator late in their evening may already be looking at figures for the broker's next trading day. CFD trading carries a high risk of losing money.

Start from the peso, not from the lot

Most margin calculators begin with a lot size and return a margin figure. A trader whose capital is in pesos needs the calculation run backwards, in three steps that no calculator on the broker's side performs. First, convert the peso budget into the base currency at your own bank's rate, because PHP is not one of the ten base currencies and IC Markets publishes no peso rate anywhere in its schedule. Second, decide what fraction of the resulting balance you are willing to see locked as margin rather than left as free equity. Only then divide by the per-lot margin at the tier the position will genuinely fall into.

Worked through: suppose a peso budget arrives as USD 2,000 after conversion, and the decision is to keep margin under a quarter of equity - USD 500. On EUR/USD at an illustrative 1.1000, one lot inside the first tier locks USD 22 of margin, so USD 500 covers roughly 22 lots on paper. That number is a margin ceiling, not a risk decision: the 50% stop out is measured against equity, and 22 lots of exposure against USD 2,000 of equity is a very different proposition from 22 lots against USD 20,000. The calculator answers what fits. It does not answer what survives.

A position large enough to cross all three tiers

The published USDCHF example gives three tiers: 1:5000 on the first 0-25 lots, 1:3000 from 25 to 50 lots, and 1:1000 above 50, with each slice margined at its own rate. A position that stays inside the first tier never sees the other two, which is why the headline ratio looks accurate until it suddenly is not.

Take 60 lots of EUR/USD at an illustrative 1.1000, so each lot carries USD 110,000 of notional value. The first 25 lots (USD 2,750,000) lock USD 550 at 1:5000. The next 25 lots (another USD 2,750,000) lock USD 916.67 at 1:3000. The final 10 lots (USD 1,100,000) lock USD 1,100 at 1:1000. The total is USD 2,566.67 against the USD 1,320 a flat 1:5000 would imply - almost double, and the gap widens with every lot added above 50.

The same position on cTrader, where leverage is capped at 1:1000 throughout, requires USD 6,600. Neither figure includes the extra margin demanded inside a Higher Margin Requirement window.

The PHP step this calculator cannot do for you

If your risk budget is set in pesos, it has to be converted into the account's base currency before any of the sums above apply - and IC Markets does not publish a PHP conversion rate, since PHP is not one of the ten base currencies and no Philippines-specific funding rail (no GCash, Maya, GrabPay, InstaPay or PESONet) is listed either. Combine that with the account facts a calculator alone will not show - USD 3.50 per lot per side on Raw Spread, or the flat overnight holding fee on a Swap Free position - and a peso-denominated risk budget is not the same figure this calculator works with until the conversion, handled by your own bank or card issuer, is resolved.

Three windows in which this page's answer is too low

IC Markets temporarily raises margin requirements in three defined situations, and inside them a calculation built on the published tiers will understate what the account actually needs. The daily window runs from 30 minutes before market close until 15 minutes after the open. The weekend window runs from one hour before the Friday close until 30 minutes after the Monday open. The news window runs from 15 minutes before a high-impact release until one minute after it.

The broker publishes the width of each window but not its clock time, and the clock the windows run on is the server's rather than Manila's: MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 price from Equinix NY4 in New York, cTrader from London, while the Philippines stays on UTC+8 with no daylight saving. The only reliable instruction is therefore procedural rather than arithmetic - inside those windows, read the margin figure from the terminal itself, not from this page or any other calculator.

What no calculator on either side prices

• The two currency crossings at the edges of the account - pesos in, pesos out - priced by your own bank or card issuer. IC Markets states it charges no deposit or withdrawal fee itself, and it does not perform the conversion either.
• Commission, which sits outside the margin sum entirely: USD 3.50 per lot per side on a Raw Spread MetaTrader account (USD 7.00 round turn), USD 3.00 per USD 100,000 on cTrader Raw Spread, and USD 0 on Standard, where the cost is carried inside a spread from 0.8 pips.
• The Swap Free holding fee, charged per lot for every night a position stays open and published per symbol - and the broker's stated right to withdraw Swap Free status without being obliged to give a justification.
• The 50% stop out itself, which is the level at which the arithmetic stops belonging to the trader and starts belonging to the platform.

Related IC Markets pages