Leverage is the use of borrowed money (called “capital”) to invest in a currency, stock, or security. The concept of leverage is very common in forex trading. By borrowing money from a broker, investors can trade larger positions in a currency. As a result, leverage magnifies the returns from favorable movements in a currency’s exchange rate. However, leverage is a double-edged sword, meaning it can also magnify losses. It’s important for forex traders to learn how to manage leverage and use risk management strategies to cut down on forex losses.
Leverage and Margin in Forex Trading
- Leverage, which is the use of borrowed money to invest, is very common in forex trading.
- By borrowing money from a broker, investors can trade larger positions in a currency.
- However, leverage is a double-edged sword, meaning it can also magnify losses.
- Many brokers require a percentage of a trade to be held in cash as collateral, and that requirement can be higher for certain currencies.
Understanding Leverage in the Forex Market
The forex market is the largest in the world with more than $5 trillion worth of currency exchanges occurring daily.
Forex trading involves buying and selling the exchange rates of currencies with the goal that the rate will move in the trader’s favor. Forex currency rates are quoted or shown as bid and ask prices with the broker. If an investor wants to go long or buy a currency, they would be quoted the ask price, and when they want to sell the currency, they would be quoted the bid price.
For example, an investor might buy the euro versus the U.S. dollar (EUR/USD), with the hope that the exchange rate will rise. The trader would buy the EUR/USD at the ask price of $1.10. Assuming the rate moved favorably, the trader would unwind the position a few hours later by selling the same amount of EUR/USD back to the broker using the bid price. The difference between the buy and sell exchange rates would represent the gain (or loss) on the trade.
Investors use leverage to enhance the profit from forex trading. The forex market offers one of the highest amounts of leverage available to investors.
Leverage is essentially a loan that is provided to an investor from the broker. The trader’s forex account is established to allow trading on margin or borrowed funds. Some brokers may limit the amount of leverage used initially with new traders. In most cases, traders can tailor the amount or size of the trade based on the leverage that they desire. However, the broker will require a percentage of the trade’s notional amount to be held in the account as cash, which is called the initial margin.
The Risks of Leverage
Although the ability to earn significant profits by using leverage is substantial, leverage can also work against investors. For example, if the currency underlying one of your trades moves in the opposite direction of what you believed would happen, leverage will greatly amplify the potential losses. To avoid a catastrophe, forex traders usually implement a strict trading style that includes the use of stop-loss orders to control potential losses. A stop-loss is a trade order with the broker to exit a position at a certain price level. In this way, a trader can cap the losses on a trade.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Do you have to pay all of the leverage back when you trade forex?
You are required to pay back any leverage you use while trading. Leverage is debt just like any other type of loan, but unlike other types of debt, you may have some flexibility as to when you settle your balance. Your brokerage decides how much you can borrow and when you need to pay it back. At some point, you will have to settle your leverage debt.
How do you trade with leverage?
From a technical standpoint, trading with leverage is the same as trading without it. Leverage simply allows you to place larger orders, but the process of planning trades, placing orders, and managing positions is the same, no matter your leverage ratio.
Leverage is powerful and very useful in Forex Trading. With 100:1 leverage you are effective using $1 to hold $100 dollars. With 500:1 leverage will enable you to hold $500 using $1. This is nothing new to finance industry but widely use for currency trading in order to use the dollar unit value of currency.
It works with capital that funded the trade. The capital has to be in currency value or cash in order to attain the leverage holding. This is similar to derivative or contract for difference for stock and shares. Using cash to leverage is much more powerful than using physical assets as it is harder to dilute and cash it back. Therefore, leverage is still used by currency trade with capital at 100:1 leverage. This determined the 1 lot size of 100k contract in forex trading. (For mini lot is 0.1 lot of 100k contract).
1 lot actually holds 100k contract worth of currency. This is equivalent to $1k of capital used to hold $100k contract worth of currency. Since pip is used for currency movement, 100k for 1 pip movement will work out to $10 a pip. (10,000 pips actually give 1 dollar, but in the context of leverage, it is $100k contract).
For trading account, which gives 200:1 or 500:1 leverage is different from the currency trading leverage. Please do not mix up both. The currency leverage is fixed at 100:1 for currency trading of 100k contract. Mini lot is executed at 0.1 lot or 0.01 lot. For trading account leverage which is 200:1 or 500:1, this will determine your margin required to hold in order to perform the 1 lot of 100k contract. Using 100:1, is $1k. Using 200:1 is $500 per lot. Using 500:1 is $200 per lot. This of course with higher leverage you actually can buy more lots. With a trading account leverage of 500:1, you can buy 5 lots at a total of 1k capital.
No doubt this enables you to buy more lots with higher leverage, but the down size is the drawdown and the pips loss still remains as per your trading lot of 100k contractions. So most money management software will use a mini lot at 0.1 lot or 0.01 lot to trade. ($1 and $0.1 per pip respectively). Therefore do not mix up these two. One is the 100k contract leverage for currency buy and sell which is fixed at 100:1. The other is your trading account leverage which is provided by your Forex broker.
I end of this topic by comparing the trading in stock and shares. Without this, you buy 1 share per 1 share price. Using this, you can buy 100 times more using the same capital. (Assuming share price is the same as currency price, and 1000 shares are equivalent to 1 USD per share.) Using 1k capital, you can buy 1000 shares or buy 1 lot of 100k contract forex currency trade.