Why has my order been rejected?

When placing an order you may see an error message stating that the order cannot be placed. There are a number of potential reasons why any particular order has been rejected.

While we continuously work on providing clarity when this happens, please find a list of common errors for rejected orders and explanations for why this may have happened below:

• Trade would exceed the available margin. Review your positions and orders
• You have insufficient funds to place this trade
• Market orders, placed while the market is closed
• Why can't I place a short trade?

Trade would exceed the available margin. Review your positions and orders.

Reason: The trade would result in a too high margin utilization given the exposure and cash availability in the account you are placing the trade from. 

What can you do?:

• You can add more funds to your account.
• You can also try to reduce the trade size.

You have insufficient funds to place this trade

Among others, these could be the reasons:

• The cash balance available in your account is too low. Please deposit more funds or reduce the value of the trade.
• You have pending open orders that if executed will need cash if they increase your exposure. Therefore the system reserves cash to place that trade. Please check your pending orders.
• Cash Buffer. the platforms reserves a cash buffer before any trade execution. The buffer is to ensure you have sufficient cash to cover commissions/fees as well as ensure that you will not go into negative in case of a market gap.

Market orders, placed while the market is closed

They might be rejected due to the fact that the system will calculate an additional cash buffer, based on the instrument's rating, that must be available in order to buy shares. Please place a limit order instead in such case, as the limit price will provide a maximum purchase price.

Rating	Cash Buffer
1	10%
2	10%
3	10%
4	15%
5	25%
6	50%

The last one is relevant for trading cash instruments - stocks, bonds, and ETFs. Please read more below.

Summary

Before the system allows any client to submit an order, there are a few pre-checks in place. These pre-checks try to ensure that clients:

1. Do not trade themselves on margin.
2. Will have a positive cash balance in case the order gets executed.
3. Have a positive cash balance in case the order is executed, and there will be sufficient cash balance so that all of the positions can subsequently be closed at a later point.

Why can't I place a short trade?

You cannot sell stocks that you don't own. However, if you wish to short a stock (sell without owning the stock), you have the option to short the CFD based on that stock.