Safety of funds

Segregation means a broker holds client deposits in accounts separate from its own operating funds, so day-to-day business costs cannot be paid from client balances and client money remains identifiable as such if the firm runs into difficulty.

Where it applies, the specific arrangements — which institutions hold the money and on what terms — belong in the client agreement rather than in marketing copy, because the agreement is the document you can actually enforce. Read that section before funding an account with any broker, and treat a firm that will not put the arrangement in writing as having answered the question.

Negative balance protection means that if an extreme market movement takes a retail account's equity below zero, the balance is reset to zero. Where it applies, you cannot end a trading day owing the broker money because a market gapped through your stop overnight.

This matters because leverage makes such events arithmetically possible. Without the protection, a weekend gap on a leveraged position can produce a debt larger than everything you deposited. With it, the worst case is losing what is in the account — which is still a complete loss, and still the reason position sizing matters.

Two thresholds operate on every live account. At the margin-call level you are notified that equity has fallen far enough to put open positions at risk. At the stop-out level the platform begins closing positions automatically, starting with the largest loss, without waiting for a decision from anyone.

Both levels are set per account type and applied by the platform rather than by discretion, which means they behave identically for every client and cannot be waived for one and enforced against another. Our confirmed levels appear in the account comparison as soon as they are set. They are a backstop, not a risk strategy — a stop-loss you placed yourself works at a level you chose.

Every safeguard on this page addresses custody and catastrophic loss. None of them addresses market risk. Money that is segregated, protected, and stopped out can still be lost entirely through ordinary trading, and most retail accounts trading leveraged CFDs do lose money.

These mechanisms mean a loss is bounded by the deposit and client funds are not spent on a firm's costs. They do not make trading safe, and any broker implying otherwise is selling you something. The only protection against market risk is the size of the position you choose to open.