F&O Margin Calculator — SPAN + Exposure margin required
Calculate margin required to trade index and stock futures & options. SPAN + Exposure margin breakdown with leverage.
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About the F&O Margin Calculator
Trading index/stock futures and options requires margin to be blocked upfront. Margin = SPAN (risk-based, computed by NSE/BSE based on a 16-scenario worst-case price/volatility shock) + Exposure (additional buffer above SPAN to absorb 2–3% price moves). Exchange margins are recalculated six times daily during market hours; we use representative mid-day values for index and stock derivatives. The actual margin you'll need can fluctuate intraday as volatility shifts.
Leverage = contract value ÷ margin. Index futures (Nifty, BankNifty, FinNifty, Sensex) typically give 6–8x leverage. Stock futures give 4–5x. Options buyers only pay premium (no margin requirement) — but premiums can decay rapidly. Options sellers pay full margin like futures, often with additional Volatility Margin and Mark-to-Market overnight if positions move against them. Selling naked options is the highest-margin activity in F&O.
New SEBI peak margin rules enforced from December 2020 (phased through August 2021): brokers must collect full upfront margin for both buy and sell legs; no more intraday-only leverage boost where brokers used to fund 5–10x leverage on margin shortfall. Short-margin penalty = 0.5–5% per day depending on shortfall size. Practical effect: intraday F&O capital requirements roughly doubled overnight, eliminating many small retail traders from the F&O market.
How to read the margin breakdown for a position: SPAN tells you what the exchange thinks your worst-case 1-day loss is, modeled across 7 price scenarios × 2 volatility scenarios. Exposure margin is broker/exchange's safety buffer. The two together are your initial margin requirement. As your position moves against you intraday, MTM (Mark-to-Market) is debited from your trading account in near-real-time — if it falls below maintenance margin (typically 60–80% of initial), you get a margin call and your broker can square off positions without notice.
Risk warning: F&O is not a get-rich-quick instrument. SEBI's January 2023 study found that 89% of individual F&O traders lost money in FY 2021–22, with average net loss of ₹1.10 lakh per active trader. Aggregate retail F&O losses crossed ₹50,000 crore in FY 2022. If you're new to F&O, start with simple covered-call or cash-secured-put strategies on stocks you already hold, not naked options or aggressive futures positions. Always size positions so that a stop-loss hit costs you less than 1–2% of total capital.