IC Markets Margin, Pip Value and Carry - Worked in Dollars, Funded in Shillings · Kenya
Four sums, not three. Margin across the leverage bands, pip value, the flat Swap Free night fee - and the currency conversion no broker calculator shows a Kenyan trader.
Open IC Markets Account →Three sums sit behind every position, and they take different inputs: the margin the broker locks while the trade is open, the pip value that turns price movement into money, and - on a Swap Free account - the flat overnight fee charged in place of swap. This page runs all three on IC Markets' published tiered leverage and its 50% stop out, read on 2 September 2026. Then it runs the fourth sum, the one no broker calculator does: converting a shilling risk budget into an account currency that cannot be shillings, and back out again. This is an independent site, not the broker's tool. CFD trading carries a high risk of losing money.
Three calculations, and the conversion step Kenya adds
Kenya does not change the arithmetic IC Markets publishes. It changes what has to happen - a currency conversion, through a payment rail the broker does not publish for Kenya specifically - before that arithmetic means anything to a shilling-funded account.
- Leverage is applied band by band, to the slice of the position inside each: 1:5000 up to 25 lots, 1:3000 from 25 to 50, 1:1000 beyond, on MetaTrader. cTrader is 1:1000 flat.
- Stop out is 50% of required margin on every account type, so the closing threshold moves whenever the margin does.
- Higher Margin Requirement windows raise the requirement temporarily: daily around the server close and reopen, across the weekend from an hour before Friday close, and around a high-impact release. They are defined on server time, so their Nairobi hour shifts twice a year.
- Every output below lands in USD or one of nine other base currencies. KES is not offered, so no result on this page is ever a shilling figure.
- Swap Free replaces the swap line with a flat published charge per lot per night - USD 62 on gold, USD 25 on US30, USD 11 on EUR/USD, USD 9 on silver.
- There is no Kenyan funding rail on the broker's own list, so the conversion below is not optional for a shilling-funded trader - it is the first step.
Where the cost sits on each IC Markets account
| Account | What you pay | Where it shows up | What it costs to trade one lot, both ways |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raw Spread | 0.0 pips plus USD 3.50 per side | A separate commission line, plus the Swap Free fee if the position is carried | USD 7.00 the round turn, before any spread |
| cTrader Raw Spread | 0.0 pips plus USD 3.00 per USD 100,000 | A separate line on the cTrader statement | USD 6.00 the round turn on a standard lot |
| Standard | About 0.8 pips, no commission | Inside the quote itself | Roughly USD 8 on a standard EUR/USD lot at USD 10 a pip |
| Raw Pro, early access | Raw pricing plus USD 1.50 per side | A separate commission line | USD 3.00 the round turn, but USD 5,000 is needed to open it |
No figure on this page can be produced in shillings, because the shilling is not one of the ten currencies an IC Markets account can be denominated in. Nor is there a Kenyan funding rail to convert through: the funding page names fifteen routes, two of them country-specific for Thailand and Vietnam, and none for Kenya. Whatever rate a card, an e-wallet or a wire applies on the way in - and again on the way out, since withdrawals must return to their source - sits outside every number here, and outside the broker's own fee schedule too, which charges nothing for deposits or withdrawals itself.
Pip value, margin and carry: the three inputs that are not interchangeable
Margin answers how much equity a position locks while it is open, and it depends on notional size and on which leverage bands that size crosses. Pip value answers what one tick of movement is worth, and on a standard EUR/USD lot it is USD 10 a pip regardless of leverage - a number leverage cannot change. The Swap Free holding fee answers what the position costs to keep overnight, and it depends only on the symbol and the number of lots: USD 62 a night for each lot of gold, USD 26 on GBP/CHF, USD 25 on US30, USD 16 on GBP/JPY, USD 15 on EUR/CHF, USD 11 on EUR/USD, USD 9 on silver and on AUD/CAD.
The three answers arrive in the same currency and it is never KES. USD, AUD, EUR, GBP, SGD, NZD, JPY, CHF, HKD and CAD are the ten on offer. So a Kenyan trader working from a shilling budget has to convert before the first sum and after the last one, and the exchange rate that does it is set by their bank, not by anything on this page.
A worked example that crosses all three leverage bands
Take 60 lots of EUR/USD at an illustrative 1.1000, and substitute your own live quote before using the answer. Sixty standard lots is 6,000,000 euro, a notional of USD 6,600,000. The margin is not that notional divided by one headline number; it is the sum of three slices.
| Band | Lots inside it | Notional in that band | Leverage applied | Margin locked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First band | 25 | USD 2,750,000 | 1:5000 | USD 550.00 |
| Second band | 25 | USD 2,750,000 | 1:3000 | USD 916.67 |
| Third band | 10 | USD 1,100,000 | 1:1000 | USD 1,100.00 |
| Total | 60 | USD 6,600,000 | Blended, about 1:2571 | USD 2,566.67 |
Read the last row against the headline. A flat 1:5000 would have suggested USD 1,320 of margin; the tiered reality is USD 2,566.67, very nearly double, and the effective leverage on the whole position is about 1:2571 rather than 1:5000. Stop out at 50% puts the closing threshold near USD 1,283 of equity. During a Higher Margin Requirement window the requirement rises temporarily on top of all this - daily from 30 minutes before the server close until 15 minutes after the reopen, at weekends from an hour before Friday close to half an hour after Monday's, and from 15 minutes before a high-impact release to a minute after it. Carry those same 60 lots overnight on a Swap Free account and EUR/USD adds USD 660 a night on top, at USD 11 per lot.
The shilling step, done as arithmetic rather than a shrug
Suppose a risk budget of 500,000 shillings. Before any figure on this page applies, it has to become dollars, and it has to become dollars twice: once when the deposit converts on the way in, and once when a withdrawal converts back, because withdrawals must return to the source of the deposit. Call your bank's all-in margin over the interbank rate m, applied on each leg. The round-trip cost is not m, it is close to 2m.
| Assumed margin per leg | Cost on the way in | Cost on the way out | Round trip on a USD 1,000 equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0% | USD 10 | About USD 10 | About USD 20 |
| 2.0% | USD 20 | About USD 20 | About USD 39 |
| 3.5% | USD 35 | About USD 34 | About USD 69 |
Those percentages are placeholders, not quotes - substitute the number your own bank or card issuer actually charges, since IC Markets publishes none and charges no deposit or withdrawal fee of its own. The point is the comparison. At 3.5% a leg, a USD 1,000 round trip gives up about USD 69 to currency conversion, while trading a single standard lot on Raw Spread costs USD 7.00 the round turn. For a trader working modest size from Nairobi, the currency step is the larger cost line, and it is the one no calculator on any broker site will show you.
Two constraints shape how you can arrange it. Third-party payments are not accepted, so the card or bank account has to be in your own name. And card withdrawals are capped at the amount deposited by card, with any excess leaving by another route you have already used or by international wire, which can take up to 14 days and may collect intermediary fees along the way.