Margin mode where each position has its own ring-fenced collateral, so the most you can lose on it is the margin you assigned.
Assigning $500 to a position means liquidation costs $500 and no more, whatever happens to the price. The rest of the account is untouched, which makes worst-case loss explicit and easy to size against a plan.
The trade-off is that the position has no reserves. A drawdown that a cross-margined account would have absorbed liquidates an isolated one, and topping it up requires an active decision at a stressful moment. Hedges also do not net, so a hedged pair ties up margin twice.
Many traders use isolated for speculative or high-leverage positions and cross for a core hedged book. The right choice depends on whether the priority is bounding a single loss or surviving noise, and both are defensible.
Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.
Margin and leverage. A $5,000 deposit can control a $100,000 position, which is 20:1 leverage. Because the loss is measured on the full $100,000, a 2.5% move against you halves the deposit and brings a margin call, and a 5% move uses all of it.
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