Hi All,
I am trying to find an FX Broker that allows traders to set their own leverage. Most FX Brokers tend to have a pre-set leverage level of say 100:1 being 1% margin with some offering up to 400:1.
I am new to FX trading and I want to find a broker that will allow me set my leverage at 20:1.
Does any one know of any FX Brokers that allow the facility to set your own leverage or offer leverages of 20:1?
Any ideas or pointers would be most appreciated
Regards
SRA
i’m in the process of demoing brokers, and oanda was the only one where i could find a way to change the leverage (not saying others don’t have it, but they don’t make it easily available). anyways, oanda allows 10:1, 20:1, 30:1, 40:1 and 50:1.
You should put your leverage to the max, but remember the REAL leverage is not the same. You manage your real leverage with your actual position size!
Example, if you are trading with Oanda (adjustable lots[units]), and have 50:1 leverage, with 1000 dollars, you “could” use 1000x50 = 50.000 units. You should never use that much! Actually, it would be wise to only use roughly 2% or 1:1 true leverage per trade, which would be 1000 units with 1000 dollar account 
I usually trade longer time frames and use true leverage per trade of 1:1 - 1:3. This way i dont need to have too tight stops. Over leveraging is the most common doom of traders.
Thanks Johto much appreciated, tell me what has been your experience with Oanda, I haven’t dealt with them yet but I will review their site
SRA
Thank you very much Hyperbling, your feedback is appreciated. I will review Oanda, tell me how would you rate them as a broker? i.e. ease of use, access, support etc.
Thanks again
SRA
Oanda is good and big fx broker. Like every “market makers”, your best bet to be “winner”, is not to have too near stop loss, and dont fall for the trap of overtrading too often and too close to the price action. I would recommend to use h4 / daily time frames and adjust risk with stop loss acordingly far enough from the “noise”. This way you are not hit with spread widening during news etc… Best to try and trade the “bigger picture” if you are just starting.
Oanda is good because you can adjust your trade size with “units” and no need to use “lots”. This way you can adjust your risk very nicely, even on very small account.
You can open demo account (fxgame) on oanda very easily. Highly recommend for learning the platform
The platform is based on Java, which is good it runs on multiple OS’s, like Linux and OSX. It has enough indicators that anyone “really” needs. Less is better imho 
It is true that oanda is a nice broker too. Apart of Oanda there are some more brokers too.
my oanda review so far (for demo):
it appears that execution is much faster than the competition. other brokers tend to take 1-3 seconds to get a confirmation back saying the order went through, but oanda gets that confirmation instantly. i’ll have to leave it to others to confirm, but this could simply be that oanda just tells you it went through instantly, and IF there is a problem they’re notify you later. i’ll leave it to people who do live trading to confirm this. from the reviews i’ve heard on oanda, they have good execution and good spreads.
you can adjust your lot size since by 1 unit, which gives you practically unlimited bankroll management control.
no trailing stops 
that’s the only thing i have an opinion on…everything else seems pretty good. their software is decent, but not as good as MT4. i think their spread is better than the competition most of the time. i’m sure a lot of people do this (and i plan on too when i go live), use a MT4 broker so i can program indicators and run EA, but put the actual orders through oanda.
I’ve read some good reviews and bad reviews about Oanda. I think overall it’s a good broker but personally, i won’t trade with oanda. Not suggesting anything here.
I find that brokers offering large leverage usually don’t care about the customer.