The Less Known Evil of the Leverage

Trading with leverage is extremely popular among the Forex traders. High leverage is considered dangerous because of the risks associated with the fast moving money and poor money management tactics practiced by the majority of the traders. Besides the well known danger of multiplying your losses, there is another evil hiding behind the leverage, which can wipe your trading account easily.

High leverage is advertised by many brokers. Some traders believe that the higher their leverage is the faster they will become rich and the Forex brokers that offer ridiculously high leverage are even praised. But in fact, there is a very practical and mercantile reason for the Forex brokers to offer high leverage — higher earnings.

The higher is the leverage the more money is paid by the trader to the broker in the form of the rates spread. The value of the pip that trader wins, loses or pays as a spread depends on the leverage. With 1:100 leverage a 2 pips spread for the 1 standard lot of the USD based currency pair is worth $20. That’s not a big amount if you have $100,000 account, but if your total trading account is just $2,000? That’s 1% lost despite the fact if you win or lose this position. With 1:10 leverage that spread would worth you only $2. Without leverage the spread payment to your broker would be as low as 20 cents.

Remember that the leverage comes with a price, which is quite high and which is often overlooked by the traders. If you want to learn trading profitably on a real account, try to the leverage as low as possible. Switch to the higher leverage only if you really know what you are doing. Don’t try to become rich quick with the help of the leverage. It won’t allow you.