Euro Pacific Bank

Pre-Market and Post-Market trading

UPDATED: September 14th 2018

Pre-Market

1. CFDs – pre-market trading clients can do online on the GTS Pro platform only.

2. Stocks, ETFs, Futures and Options pre-market trading are no longer supported.

Post-Market

Post-market orders are not supported at all.

How can I be warned if I am about to trade in a subaccount in a different currency than the instrument I am trading?

In GTS and GTS Pro, we display a yellow warning triangle if you are about to place a trade in an instrument in a different currency than the currency of the account AND you have an account available in the same currency as the instrument you are trading – in the below image the selected instrument is Apple, which is trading in USD – but the selected account is in EUR:

In the above example Apple is selected, a physical share. The warnings are displayed also for other instruments, as in the below image where you can see 2 examples:

  1. A EURUSD option is selected while a EUR account is selected BUT: a USD account is also available. FX Option premiums are expressed in the secondary currency, in this case USD, so it makes sense to trade this instrument on a USD account, if one is available.
  2. A DAX CFD, which is denominated in EUR is selected on a USD account AND a EUR account is available – so the platform suggests considering trading the CFD on the EUR account:

Additional collateral haircut on Stock positions in certain situations

Dear Client,

Effective today, Global Trading will introduce an additional collateral haircut on stocks. The additional haircut will be applied only in the situation where, in addition to the stock, a long single stock CFD position is held. In this scenario, the additional collateral haircut on the stock value will be equivalent to the margin requirement of the CFD position. So, in practice, this means the “Not available as margin collateral” will increase by the margin requirement of the single stock CFD.

The haircut is introduced specifically to target concentration risk where clients have a very high exposure to the same underlying stock, without impacting clients that use the stock collateral to trade derivatives with different underliers.

Example:

Today for a rating 1 stock Global Trading’s default margin requirement is 10% and collateral haircut is 25% (75% collateral value).

Stock price is 100, client has 100 shares with a total value of 100 x 100 = 10,000 and a collateral value of 75% x 10,000 = 7,500.

Using this collateral, and assuming no unrealized p/l and no cash, if the client opens 150 CFD exposure his margin requirement would be 150 x 100 x 10% = 1,500 and his margin utilization would be 1,500 / 7,500 = 20%. When the new haircut is introduced then the collateral value will be reduced by 1,500 to 6,000 and the margin utilization would be 1,500 / 6,000 = 25%.

If we assume instead of opening 150 CFDs, the client rather opens 375 CFDs the margin requirement would be 375 x 100 x 10% = 3,750. In the old model with the old haircut, the MU would be 3750/7500 = 50%. With the new, reduced hair cut model, the collateral of the stock would be reduced to by 3,750 to 3,750 and hence the new MU would be 3750 / 3750 = 100%

At 750 CFDs the margin requirement would be 750 x 100 x 10% = 7,500 with the current model and hence would be 7500 / 7500 = 100%. With the new model including CFD margin requirement haircut, this size couldn´t be opened anymore, since (as we saw in example 2) the maximum is 375 CFDs due to the haircut in the amount of the CFD Margin Requirement reducing the stock collateral value of that same stock!

Please let me reiterate that this additional haircut is only applied to collateral value of the very same stock, where clients also open single stock CFDs in. If the client does NOT have the same stock + single stock CFD positions, no additional haircut is applied

Please note – this is a general email. If your account was set to be affected by this change, you would have been individually notified.

If you have any additional questions, please email us at [email protected]

How is interest charged on my GTS account?

Positive Net Free Equity:

Please see https://europacbank.com/support/monetary-policy-impact-interest-rates/ for interest generated on threshold amounts for select currencies.

Negative Net Free Equity:

  • Interest will be charged at market ask rates plus 8%, however never less than 8%.

Interest on your main account is calculated on the Net Free Equity.

Interest on sub-accounts is calculated on the Account Value. Since the Net Free Equity is calculated on open trade positions on all your accounts, it is important to make sure that sufficient cash is available on your main account.

Otherwise, you risk being subject to a debit interest on your main account exceeding the credit interest payable on your sub-account(s).

Interest is calculated daily and settled monthly – within seven business days after the end of each calendar month.

You can view the NFE in the “Interest Details” report of the “Account” tab.

When will positions net out?

If you have long and short positions they will net out at the end of the trading day – but only if the long and short positions are on the same account and none of them have any related orders as related orders prevent the netting of positions.

In this example, notice that the client is viewing “All”-accounts (see “1” in the image), and is “Square” on EURUSD, USDJPY and Apple (See “2”, “3” and “4” in the image).

Looking at the 3 positions in more detail in the below image, you will notice:

  • The 2 EURUSD positions (long and short 1,000,000) are placed on 2 different accounts – so even though the client is square, the 2 positions will not net out (See “1” and “2” in the below image)
  • The 2 USDJPY positions (long and short 500,000) are placed on the same account – but the long position has related orders. This means that the positions will not net out at the end of the day. (See “3” and “4” in the below image)
  • The 2 Apple positions (long and short 100 Apple shares) are on the same account, and none of the positions have any related orders – so they will net out at the end of the day. (See “5” and “6” in the below image)

In the 3 examples above the long and short positions are for the same amount. It should be noted that the netting also applies if the long and short positions are for different amounts – if you have a long EURUSD position for 1.000.000 and a short for 750.000 on the same account with no related orders, they will net to a single long position of 250.000 at the end of the trading day.

First-In-First-Out (FIFO)

When netting the open positions, we use FIFO rules, which means the first position you open is the first position to be closed. Example: You are trading EURUSD opening the following positions:

  1. Buy 1M EURUSD
  2. Buy 1M EURUSD
  3. Sell 1M EURUSD
  4. Sell 2M EURUSD

Total = Sell 1M EURUSD

The first long position (1.) will net out with the first short position (3.), the second long position (2.) will net out with half of the second short position (4.), leaving only one short position of 1M EURUSD at the end of the day.

What is margin utilization and how is it calculated?

Margin Utilization (see “5” in the below image) is the percentage of margin collateral that you are utilizing for margin products trading. If the margin utilization exceeds 100% there is a risk that your margin positions will be stopped out.

Margin Utilization is calculated as = (100 * Used for margin) / (Account value + Other collateral – Not available as margin collateral).

All the data can be found in the Account Summary (see 1-4 in the below image)

In this example the client has EUR 13.861,63 – EUR 888,42 = EUR 12.973,21 as available margin in total. Of these EUR 12.973,21 currently 3.049,51 is used for margin requirements. 3.049,51/12.973,21 = 24% margin utilization.

How do I unsubscribe from an exchange?

You can unsubscribe from an exchange using the Exchange Subscription tool in the trading platform. The Subscription tool can be accessed in the “Account” tab under “Manage Subscriptions”.

Click on the “Unsubscribe” option in the “Actions” column of the subscription tool.

Please note that subscriptions are paid for each calendar month. Consequently, you will receive live prices from the exchange until the end of the calendar month despite unsubscribing.

Problems accessing Account Summary, Charts and other GTS modules

The platform communicates with many servers in order to display the different information (Prices, Charts, Chat etc. all have different servers). In some cases, your local security settings will block parts of the trading platform from communicating with one or more of these, and this causes the problems you are seeing.

Please follow the below instructions to allow the platform to reach the required servers:

Delete Temporary Internet Files

To delete Temporary Internet Files open Internet Explorer > Tools > Internet Options:

On the General tab press Delete… under Browsing history:

Now chose to delete Temporary Internet Files and Cookies and press Delete:

Blank page under Account tab in GTS on Google Chrome

The issue is almost always due to a setting in Chrome – “Block third-party cookies and site data” being ticked in the Chrome settings.

In order to untick this setting, please click on:

Choose Settings > Click on “Show advanced settings…”:

Click on “Content settings…”:

Untick “Block third-party cookies and site data” and press “Done”: