What is financial leverage (financial leverage, leverage), the essence of the concept in trading in simple words with examples, dangers in practice and possible benefits.
- The concept of leverage in trading – an educational program for beginners in simple words about the complex
- How to calculate leverage – calculation examples, calculator
- Leverage for trader and investor
- Risks and Benefits
- Features of leverage on different platforms – on Forex, stock market, on binance
- Stock market
- Forex
- How leverage works on Binance
- Isolated Margin
- Cross Margin
The concept of leverage in trading – an educational program for beginners in simple words about the complex
Financial leverage is a broker’s service for providing a loan of funds or assets. Targeted loan – funds are provided for the purchase of liquid stocks, bonds or currencies. The funds on the client’s balance act as collateral. Trading with leverage is called margin lending. The collateral for obtaining a loan from a broker is a margin. Leverage on the exchange allows you to open transactions for an amount exceeding the balance of the trading account by 5, 100, 500, or more times. When a trader believes that the probability of a successful outcome of a transaction is high, he uses leverage and makes a big profit.The trader bought 1000 shares (and not 200 if he had not used the leverage) and in case of a correct forecast, the profit will increase 5 times. If the price increases by 5%, the account balance will increase by 25%. After the reverse transaction is completed – the sale of shares, the broker will receive back the loaned money, and the profit will go to the trader. In the case of an erroneous forecast, losses increase at the same rate, but are more often limited to the amount on the trading account. The broker will close the transaction forcibly, return his money, and the amount will remain on the client’s balance – the financial result between the price of opening the transaction and liquidating the position. In our example, when the price moves against the forecast by 10% (the amount of funds on the account is 50% less than required), the broker will send a notification (“Margin Call”).Risks:
- with poor risk management, loss of capital in a short time;
- in some cases (when trading derivatives through a licensed broker of the Russian Federation); loss of an amount exceeding the deposit several times.
- rules for working with leverage;
- do not use leverage without experience collecting trading statistics. Make sure the trading strategy is profitable;
- carefully read the contract with the broker. Do not trade volatile assets with leverage (for example, gas, oil, cryptocurrencies) with brokers who do not have an insurance deposit in case of force majeure and shift losses onto the shoulders of the client;
- clearly define the rules for exiting the transaction in an unfavorable situation.
Features of leverage on different platforms – on Forex, stock market, on binance
Stock market
When trading shares on the Russian stock market, most brokers provide a margin trading service. BCS and Finam provide margin lending automatically to all clients (within the framework of the FFMS regulations). Starting this year, investors who have not received the status of a qualified investor have restrictions on the amount of leverage and the choice of securities. In Tinkoff Investments, the margin lending service is disabled by default; to use it, you must enable the option in the settings. Broker Sberbank does not provide leverage above 1 to 1 as long as the client’s assets are less than 500 thousand rubles.
The broker allows you to make deals not with all stocks and bonds, but only with the most liquid ones. You can view this list in your personal account in the section “List of margin securities” / “List of liquid securities”, etc. Assets that are not included in this list, the broker does not allow you to buy using leverage. It is also impossible to make an uncovered sale on them. The amount of leverage depends on the risk group in which the broker classified you, as well as on the discount for a particular security. For example, for Gazprom shares, the discount for buying (long deal) is 10%, for selling (short deal) 25%. This means that with a deposit of 100 thousand rubles, you can buy shares in the amount of 100,000 / 0.1 = 1,000,000 rubles, or sell them in the amount of 100,000 / 0.25 = 400,000 rubles. When opening and closing a margin transaction within one trading day, the broker provides funds for free. When transferring a position, a fee will be charged every day (on Wednesday at a rate of triple the weekend). The fee for providing leverage for each broker is different, but is about 15-20% per annum. When holding a trade within a range of up to a week and earning a multiple of the profit, the fee seems insignificant. The situation changes when you have to hold a losing margin position for a long time.
With a deposit of 200,000 rubles and an open margin position of 1,000,000 rubles, only the fee for providing leverage will be 80,000 rubles. And this is almost half of the deposit. In addition, if the shares do not stand still, but move opposite to the forecast, this will lead to the ruin of the investor.
Forex
In the forex market, 1 standard lot is equivalent to 100,000 currency units. Most forex traders do not have this amount, so dealing centers offer fractional contracts from 0.01 standard lot (equivalent to 1000 units of currency) and provide leverage. According to the legislation of the Russian Federation, forex brokers licensed by the Central Bank are not entitled to provide leverage higher than 1 to 50. The maximum leverage for alpha forex is 1 to 40.You can change it yourself for each new trade. For beginners who registered an account less than 60 days ago, this is the maximum leverage.Binance Futures has 2 margin calculation modes
Isolated Margin
When choosing the isolated margin mode, the funds are blocked and the funds are calculated for each coin separately. This helps if there is a black sheep in the portfolio. Liquidation occurs only for one position, and does not lead to the liquidation of all positions.
Cross Margin
The cross margin mode is suitable for experienced traders building a portfolio based on correlations. Margin is divided across all positions. So profitable positions support unprofitable ones. With a sharp collapse or rise of one position, the entire futures account is liquidated. It is recommended to close trades without waiting for liquidation, using stop orders. It is not always possible to accurately calculate the stop order level. The financial market is rife with manipulation in which price moves towards a likely massive accumulation of stops and reverses. After some time, in a rising market, the illusion may arise that stop orders are not worth placing. After all, quotes will still go up. Instead of closing a losing trade, you need to add more funds to maintain margin requirements. For a while, this approach will be profitable. An event will occur when it becomes clear that this is not manipulation, but a real bear market, it is too late. Losses have reached a critical value and cannot be compensated.