The transfer nobody plans

The risk on the funding side is not the first amount — it is the next one (Bangladesh)

A first transfer is decided calmly, with nothing open and no figure moving. Every transfer after it is decided while looking at an account that has already done something, and that is a completely different act performed on the same screen. This page is about the second one.

Put briefly: a first deposit answers «how much can I do without». A later deposit usually answers «how much would fix what I am looking at», and those two questions have nothing in common except the screen they are typed into. Recognising which one is being answered is the whole of the funding-side discipline, and it takes one sentence written down before the screen is opened.

Two transfers that look identical and are not

	The planned transfer	The reactive transfer
What triggered it	A date, a decision, a figure worked out in advance	Something that happened on the account within the last hour or the last day
What the amount is based on	Money that can be absent for a long time without anything changing	The size of the gap being looked at
Where the decision was made	Away from any screen, with nothing open	On the screen, with something open
What it changes	The account becomes usable, or more usable	The total that can be lost goes up; nothing else is guaranteed to change

Neither is forbidden and this site gives no instruction about either. The point is that the second one is frequently mistaken for the first, because both are typed into the same field and both feel like «funding the account».

What a top-up does, and what it is often expected to do

Three plain statements, none of them a strategy.

It does not reverse anything. Money already gone is accounted for; a new credit is a new amount alongside it, not a correction of it.
It does move the ceiling. An account cannot fall below zero — Negative Balance Protection limits losses to the money deposited — but that ceiling is measured against everything ever deposited. Each transfer raises the number the ceiling refers to.
It buys room, and room is not a plan. A larger balance can carry a position for longer. Whether carrying it for longer is worth anything is a question this site does not answer in any direction.

The second point is the one people find genuinely surprising, so it is worth restating without any softening: the protection caps the total at what was put in, and every top-up increases what was put in.

Three questions to answer before opening the funding screen a second time

Each of these can be answered in one line and none of them requires any view about markets.

Would this amount have been sent last week?

If the same figure would have looked unreasonable seven days ago and looks reasonable now, what changed is the account, not the amount available to you. That is the clearest signal there is that a reactive transfer is being made.
Does this money have a date attached to it?

Anything already promised to somebody, or needed by a particular month, fails on the date alone. A trading balance has no schedule, so money with one on it does not belong in it — and pulling it back later is a second set of transfers to arrange.
Is a smaller unit the actual answer?

Where an account keeps running short, the alternative to sending more is trading smaller. A Standard Cent account counts in cents and its trades are around a hundred times smaller, which changes the arithmetic without changing the amount at stake. What the type fixes.

Question three is the one that gets skipped, and it is the only one of the three that offers a way forward without moving more money.

Two habits on the funding side that cost nothing

Neither improves any result. Both stop the way in from adding a second problem on top of the first.

Habit	What it prevents
Write the intended figure down before opening the screen	The amount being adjusted upward while the screen is open, which is the mechanism the whole of this page is about
Send in one transfer rather than four	Four expected times, four costs and four entries to reconcile — with nothing gained over one
Keep the reserve where it already is	A decision made with nothing behind it, which is a different decision from the same one made with something behind it
Note what the account did between transfers	Reaching the third transfer without ever having read the first two as a sequence

Stated plainly

CFDs are complex instruments and trading them with leverage can lose money. Everything deposited can go, and money needed for living should never be in a trading account at all. Nothing on this page is advice about amounts, instruments, direction or timing; this site gives none, holds no funds, sees no account, and makes no claim about what any approach produces.

Questions about the amount

Is there a minimum that has to be sent?

Standard and Standard Cent accounts have no minimum initial deposit; other types carry a region-based minimum stated at sign-up. A minimum is a threshold for what is accepted, never a recommendation about what to send.

Is topping up always a mistake?

No, and this site takes no position on it. What it says is narrower: a top-up decided while looking at an open position is a different decision from one decided in advance, and it deserves to be recognised as such.

Does Negative Balance Protection mean the amount is safe?

It means the account cannot go below zero, so losses are limited to the money deposited. It does not protect any part of what was deposited, and each further transfer raises that total.

How is a workable amount calculated at all?

From the smallest size the ticket accepts and what one position takes hold of. Both can be measured on an account holding nothing. Produce the number first.

Is it better to send once or in instalments?

Mechanically, each transfer is its own entry with its own expected time and its own stated cost. Splitting one decision into four multiplies the paperwork without changing what the account can do.

What if the amount already sent turns out to be too small?

That is exactly the moment this page is written for. The two ways forward are a planned transfer decided away from the screen, or a smaller unit on the account — and only one of those moves more money.

Can this site suggest a figure?

No. It has no visibility into any account and no knowledge of anybody's circumstances, and a figure named on a page would be a guess presented as guidance.

The risk on the funding side is not the first amount — it is the next one (Bangladesh)

Two transfers that look identical and are not

What a top-up does, and what it is often expected to do

Three questions to answer before opening the funding screen a second time

Would this amount have been sent last week?

Does this money have a date attached to it?

Is a smaller unit the actual answer?

Two habits on the funding side that cost nothing

Stated plainly

Questions about the amount

Read next

Where the number comes from

What the account did in between

Then the transfer itself