Qtrade's Credit Policy requires all clients to maintain margin excess in their Margin Accounts.
Clients must maintain 10% of their current consolidated borrowed cash as margin excess. Any additional securities Buy order or Withdrawal request which results in the margin excess below this requirement will be declined.
As an example
If you wanted to buy a CAD $1000 market value of a stock that requires 30% margin, your consolidated CAD balance will go down by $1,000 and your buying power will be reduced by $300 (30% of $1000).
Assuming your current CAD equivalent consolidated cash debit balance is -$10,000
(i.e. you are already borrowing $10,000 from Qtrade) and your Buying Power ( Margin
Excess ) is $1,200, this would imply as a result of the Buy order your borrowed cash
will be -$11,000 and Buying Power reduced to $900. As we require 10% of $11,000 as
maintenance margin, the Buy request will be declined.