The 4 main reasons why brokers provide leverage
If you are reading this article, you probably understand that brokers give leverage to traders to make money. While that is true there are two other subtle reasons that you probably haven’t thought about that are very relevant to most traders.
I want to take some time to explain the top three reasons why brokers offer leverage to both new and experienced traders and some of the advertising strategies that they use to attract more clients. In the end, the more clients a platform has, the more revenue it will generate.
Out of the three reasons listed below, the second and third reasons are very beneficial to most traders. These reasons usually go unnoticed and most negative comments are generally about trading platforms ripping off new traders through high leverage.
However, if you are smart and play your cards right you can make a lot of money by using a leveraged broker. In fact, without the added buying power and the way that these platforms are structured, you would probably not be able to trade some of the most famous currency pairs such as EUR/USD or GBP/JPY.
The same goes for all the American stocks that are offered by leveraged CFD platforms which are not available through regular stock exchanges.
1. To make more money
The goal of any financial institution is always to earn revenue and make money. Without this objective, there would be no reason to start a business in the first place.
In the case of a leveraged broker, there are two primary ways they make money which I have listed below:
- Trade fees and commissions – Now, while a standard stock exchange also makes its money from trade commissions and trade fees, leveraged platforms use this revenue source to the max. For example, if you buy a stock on a regular exchange for $500, the exchange will make around $0.50 of profit. If you use the same amount of starting capital and use 1:50 leverage to buy the same stock on a CFD platform the broker will make $25. The reason for this is because your position size is 50 times bigger and therefore the fee you pay is 50 times more. This is extremely the main source of income for a leveraged broker.
- Overnight management fee – An overnight fee or a management fee is the second revenue source and this is a fee that is charged every night around midnight. This fee is an interest payment that you are obligated to pay to the platform for using the borrowed capital in your open position. The overnight fee only applies to positions that are held overnight. It is the same interest payment that you would pay for taking out a loan to buy a house or a car with the exception that this is a smaller amount and it is charged daily. Once you close out your position this fee stops.
2. To offer more markets
This holds for CFD platforms that offer leveraged contracts that mirror the price of the underlying asset. When you buy a stock on a CFD exchange you are not buying the underlying security, but instead, you buy the contract that the platform created.
By creating contracts that reflect the true price of a stock, CFD platforms can offer hundreds and even thousands of different exotic markets such as:
- Forex
- Metals
- Stocks
- Indices
- Cryptocurrencies
- Commodities
- Energies
- Derivatives
- Options
- Futures
- Bonds
- ETF
The list goes on and on. I could probably write 10 articles about the different markets offered by these platforms.
The contract mirrors the price of the real stock or the real value of the commodity with very good precision and it is not affected by liquidity issues as some ticker names experience during a year.
This is a huge advantage to traders who are searching for more markets to trade. All the markets I described above can be found on one single platform and that is another reason why they are so popular and not only for the amount of capital you can trade.
Without this advantage, there would be less activity in the order books, and the companies being these platforms would miss out on a lot of revenue.
Think about this the next time you visit a leveraged trading platform and use it to explore new markets and unknown tradable assets. Who knows, maybe you will find your perfect market out there.
3. To enable traders with smaller accounts
Most beginner and retail traders do not have an account size of $25.000, instead, most novices start with less than $1000.
This put limits to what strategies and how many markets you can trade at any given point. Thankfully there is an option for all traders with insufficient funding.
Any investor who lacks a proper account size to make enough profits to stay in the game has the option to trade the same markets and more through a leveraged account.
If your initial investment is $800 you can now increase your position size with up to 100x leverage, or more if you are capable of handling the risks.
It is true that many new investors overleveraged themselves and blow up quickly but this is usually done with a smaller account size so the damage is not that big compared to losing an account size of over $10.000.
They say it takes a couple of blown-up accounts before you learn the true nature of how to trade the markets and if you are going to learn by doing, it better be with a smaller account.
Also, if you want to trade several markets at the same time while keeping your standard lot size, you need to use a leveraged account. It works like this because the difference between forex leverage and lots are two distinct things in trading.
While trading this small account you can add leverage to the mix and enter the markets with enough size to make real money on your positive trades. This is one of the biggest advantages of leveraging up and using borrowed funds.
4. To offer short-selling
If you are not already familiar with the concept of short-selling in a leveraged market I recommend that you read this article.
Short-selling is not traditionally an option on regular stock exchanges. However, through leveraged platforms, short-selling is a common practice.
With the use of leveraged contracts, you can easily borrow money, sell it to the market, and later buy it back when the price drops. This will yield a good profit if you are a talented speculator.
I will say that this style of trading is not for everyone and you need to be very comfortable about how to enter a negative market.
Many traders attempt to short-sell forex, crypto, or even stocks but fail miserably.
This is because, in reality, most markets go up more often than they go down. The reason for this is that there are more bulls in any given market and the bull markets are usually the most common trend.
However, it is an advantage to take notice of because the profits earned from a properly executed short position can outweigh your standard trades.
This is because when the market falls it triggers a domino effect and a negative feedback loop where traders get scared and sell their contracts only to trigger more fear in other traders and the cycle repeats.
Using an operator with leverage gives you the option to profit from downside movements as well.
Related: Use our short stock calculator to find out your profit, loss, and position size while shorting with leverage.