Not all but yeah, most, and there wasn't a great deal in the account for this very reason. I can see the maintenance value and why it occured, forced liquidation seems quite a useful feature in some respects, it would be nice if it were possible to optionally specify/unspecify you'r own value to liquidate sooner. It was 10:1 but you don't seem to get 10:1 right off, it's like you've got to trade and then trade the profits ect... before you can get neer the full 10:1.
What I can't see is how there was any scope for the price to fall that much, it would have been above a safe level to start with and only ever went up, the bottom of the dip was above the point when I left to sleep. I can see on Bitcoin charts that this was the case.
Either Bitcoinica or Charts are lying, or the spreads progressively increased faster than the price did and Bitcoinica selectively saw either end of the spread as to be not in my favour. Is this possible?
It's as if you get 10:1 where the price falls but only 4:1 where it rises.
I wish Bitcoinica showed more relevent detail as to what was going on and less irrelevant stuff.
When you buy at Bitcoinica, you buy at the high price on the spread -- e.g. around $6.257 right now. When you sell, you sell at the low of the spread -- $6.157 right now. When the price takes a big spike up, the buy price will jump up so that it's always higher than the buy price at MtGox; however, the sell price does not move up immediately in response and will lag by several minutes at least. This is all done to protect Bitcoinica from rapid fluctuations.
So, what happens if there's a huge buy immediately followed by a huge sell? The buy price on the spread jumps up several percent higher than the highest recent price on MtGox, and the sell price of the spread drops to several percent lower than the lowest recent price on MtGox, the result being that the spread might be over $0.50 at the current prices. Last night there was a time where the price jumped from $5.89 to $6.36 over a period of four minutes, and then dropped to just under $6 about nine minutes later. Six minutes later it's back up to $6.24. At that point the spread could be something like $5.75 sell, $6.50 buy, and with a high leverage you get force liquidated. However, the force liquidation occurs (I believe) at the current MtGox price, so by the time it gets processed the actual liquidation price might be at $6.15 or something.
Two lessons: One, don't use high leverage in a volatile market -- you're almost guaranteed to get liquidated at a loss. Two, if you're using high leverage and you see a big profit, take it! LOL. You could always try using a stop order to secure profits (still not guaranteed unless you're way up).
