"Margin is insufficient" - Error

API Futures API
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1

When trying to execute an order during high market volatility, I am getting a response of “Margin is insufficient”. During normal market conditions, this doesn’t seem to happen.

An example scenario I am running into.

Where a max position is 5,000USDT at 100USDT x 50 leverage. An order executed for 99USDT x 50 is failing with the error indicated, even when the wallet has 120USDT.

Code Below:

var reqSymbolPrice = client.FuturesUsdt.Market.GetPrice(_appSettings.BinanceSymbol).Data;
decimal symbolPrice = reqSymbolPrice.Price;
int symbolQuantity = _calculateQuantity(symbolPrice);

                    _loggerService.LogMessage("Attempting order...", eLogType.Confirm);

                    var reqPlaceOrder = client.FuturesUsdt.Order.PlaceOrder(
                        symbol: _appSettings.BinanceSymbol,
                        side: OrderSide.Buy,
                        type: OrderType.Market,
                        quantity: symbolQuantity
                    );

private int _calculateQuantity(decimal symbolPrice) { return (int)(_appSettings.BinanceAmountSpend / symbolPrice) * _appSettings.BinanceLeverageMultiplier; }

Where BinanceLeverageMultiplier = leverage (x50 in our example) and BinanceAmountSpend = amount of money to buy with (99USDT in our example)

The app will retry, and it seems it can take upwards of 20 retries for the order to go through. The same issue occurs when trying a trade at 1200USDTx20 leverage (where the max is a 25,000USDT position, or 1250USDTx20) where the wallet has 1300USDT.

In this situation, an isolated margin is being used.

Any thoughts on how to mitigate this?

4

I am also facing this same issue, I am stuck to debug it, Any solutions?

2

Hi. Please check if you have sufficient assets in the isolated margin account.

3

I was having the same issue mentioned in this thread. I ended up putting more funds in the account and it did address the “Insufficient Margin” problem. However, the numbers are confusing to me and I am wondering if you could explain.

When doing a $800x50 leverage trade during normal market conditions I am getting a margin of roughly what I would expect at whatever I put in (ie. ~$800). During market volatility, my margin on that $800 trade was $1,700, with a MUCH lower leverage than I have specified.

I am logging market price before I send the request vs what the avg fill price is on the binance side, and when the order is filled, the price was only 0.28% higher.

What accounts for this extreme difference in margin?

1 Like
5

I am also getting same issue. But after series of this same issue I found a pattern. That is, If the usable capital or amount in our wallet is near to total asset value, then it’s raising margin insufficient error
Example:
if you have 100 USDT in futures wallet,
if you are using around 95 to 98 USDT to trade with any leverage, it will raise margin insufficient error.
if you use less than 90 USDT, It will work.

That’ the pattern I found, Still don’t know why it’s like that,
Hope this will help you

6

Do we need to put USDT or ETH in the isolated margin account in order to trade futures?

7

Hi!

I’m facing the same problem, getting error:
{"code":-2019,msg:"Margin is insufficient."}.

I do understand the following:

When placing a market (buy) order, we set the quantity of the symbol we want to buy, not the amount of USDT we want to “spend”. During high market volatility, when price changes fast, it is easy to miscalculate the quantity we can buy. Example:
I have 120 USDT in my balance. I want to buy $XYZ coin (with 10x leverage) which price was 0.3 USDT the last time my script checked. This means with leverage I can use 120x10=1200 USDT for the trade meaning that I can buy 1200/0.3=4000 XYZ. The problem is that if I send the market buy order for 4000 XYZ (trying to use 100% of my balance), and the price increased only just a little bit (for example to 0.301) this means that the 4000 XYZ coin will cost 4000x0.301=1204 USDT - which (with 10x leverage) would require 1204/10=120.4 USDT in my balance and this way it will result in a “Margin is insufficient” error.

Because of this I edited my algorithm to use only 75% of my balance, but I STILL got the “Margin is insufficient” error. In my case I’ve checked the price of the coin in a 1 second(!) chart and even if the price spiked, using only 75% of my balance for the calculations, the order should have been successful. I also tested my algorithm in a non volatile market, and the order was successful every single time, so the problem is NOT with my algorithm.

Really looking for a solution!

1 Like
8

I was able to solve this problem. Essentially, what the error message is stating is the actual issue, I will explain further.

I found that the amount you’re intending to spend can be WILDLY different than what is required to open the trade, especially when dealing with a very volatile asset. I was finding that my margin wallet sometimes needed DOUBLE or more than the amount than I was intending to spend in order to open the trade (and as a result, binance used it all to open the trade)

For example: Lets say you want to spend $100 (on 50x margin) on an asset that is currently $0.50. You would do the following.

  • Query the price from the API ($0.50)
  • Calculate quantity based on asset price, what you want to spend, and margin((100 / 0.50) * 50 = 10000)
  • Execute trade

In the above scenario, you would be expecting to have a trade open, at 50x margin for 10000 of the asset, costing you $100. In reality what happens is that regardless of the leverage you want, binance will give you significantly less (you will expect to be leveraged at 50x, but in reality, will be way lower than that, sometimes as low as only 20-25x instead of the 50x you wanted). Since your trade opens leveraged significantly lower, the cost you need out of your wallet for 10000 is not $100, it’s much higher.

Basically, in the example above, for very volatile assets, you may want to have 2-3 times what you were expecting to spend in your wallet (so in our example, $200-300 instead of $100), and expect that the trade will open at a cost much higher than the $100 you wanted it to, but at a lower leverage.

I was able to confirm this over a period of a couple months. Initially the asset I was dealing with wasn’t as volatile, and giving a 10% padding was sufficient (I could put $110-120 in my wallet and execute my $100 trades fine). Over time, the asset got more volatile, and I had to increase the amount in the wallet substantially to successfully open trades, even though I was still calculating based on a $100 spend amount).

Hope this helps. Not ideal in that you’re losing predictability in how much you’re going to spend, but at least easy to get around.

9

It must be a bug in Binance Futures API and it is totally random.
In my case I had 160.91 USDT in my wallet, no open orders nor positions.

1st order failed, 1160(quantity) x 0.13862(price) = 160.7992
2nd order failed, 1173(quantity) x 0.13714(price) = 160.86522
3rd order passed, 1160(quantity) x 0.13863(price) = 160.8108 (the size is higher than on the 1st order)

Logs:

08:36:22.557[Th:1][TraderFutures] Opening NKN(S) position, symbol:NKNUSDT
08:36:22.784[Th:1][TraderFutures] openPositionAsync error: NKNUSDT, SELL, 1160.0, 0.13862, com.binance.client.exception.BinanceApiException
Message: [Executing] -2019: Margin is insufficient.

08:36:25.967[Th:1][TraderFutures] Opening NKN(S) position, symbol:NKNUSDT
08:36:26.834[Th:1][TraderFutures] openPositionAsync error: NKNUSDT, SELL, 1173.0, 0.13714, com.binance.client.exception.BinanceApiException
Message: [Executing] -2019: Margin is insufficient.

08:36:30.023[Th:1][TraderFutures] Opening NKN(S) position, symbol:NKNUSDT
08:36:30.247[Th:1][TraderFutures] Order[clientOrderId=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,cumQuote=0,executedQty=0,orderId=1952423271,origQty=1160,price=0.13863,reduceOnly=false,side=SELL,positionSide=BOTH,status=NEW,stopPrice=0,symbol=NKNUSDT,timeInForce=GTX,type=LIMIT,updateTime=1657874190136,workingType=CONTRACT_PRICE]

10

Has anyone been able to solve this issue?

13

I fugured out the problem with error Margin is insufficient,

you calculate your margin required, then before you enter a trade, change the leverage based on your calculates, wait until request is successfully completed, then enter a trade. No more error.

14

do you mind to share some examples for this solution?