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The cash in your paper account that you can spend on new trades. It goes down when you buy and up when you sell or collect a dividend. Margin held for short positions is already taken out of it, so it can be lower than the cash you started with even when you have lost nothing.
Example:
Start with $100,000 and buy $10,000 of shares. Your cash balance is $90,000 and your total value is still about $100,000.