Trading In The Forex Market With High Leverage
January 22, 2010 by Bart Icles
Filed under Forex Markets
The foreign exchange or currency market is one of the most attractive places to trade in. It is also one of the most volatile yet rewarding markets where you can invest into. In this kind of market, it is not unusual to find leverages of 100:1 and sometimes, even more. However, instead of discouraging people to trade in the forex market, the number of people who are looking into taking advantage of this high leverage appears to be increasing. The key here is for you to use the high leverage only if you have already calculated and reviewed the different risks associated with high leverage trading.
There are different ways for you to trade in the forex market using high leverages without making the whole process become problematic. But before we dig deeper into high leverage trading, let us first review what leverage means. Leverage is a term used to describe the use of other people’s money in buying and selling currencies or foreign exchange. For example, if a broker offers you a 10:1 average, this simply means he or she is willing to let you borrow 10 times the amount of money in the account so you can make a trade.
To be more specific, if a certain contract has a value of $30,000 and the broker is offering a 50:1 leverage, this simply means you only need to have $600 in your account to purchase the contract. If the value of the contract goes up to $33,000, you can already make a profit of $3,000. This already represents a 10% return on the purchase price of the contract and a 500% return on equity.
You might find these figures to be on the extremes but these large amounts of leverage are quite common in the forex market. This is because the foreign exchange market is the largest and most liquid market in the world and this makes it quite easy to get into and out of a certain position. In this way, you can have more control over how much you can earn or lose in a given trade. This also allows foreign exchange brokers to let their clients benefit from the high leverages.
However, you should keep in mind that it is not always that you will have to trade on high leverages. There are times when you will need to simply sit back and watch all the players do their trades. But if you are quite sure that you have calculated and you can manage the different risks involved in a certain high leverage trade, you can always use such leverage to your advantage.
A forex trading investment starts with a desire to learn and a drive to become a great trader. Learning forex signal software takes dedication and a good teacher. But once you learn how to trade and do so successfully your life will change and you have options and financial resources you never had before.