Yes you can trade without leverage in principle, but you would need to have a lot of money to play with to make trading worthwhile. The real movement in currency pairs is fractional so applying leverage introduces more profit potential for retail traders whilst allowing us to play on the interbank market.
Although your broker might provide leverage as a default setting on your account, you could always just choose not to use it by trading lot sizes that fall well within your account balance. So if you had 50k in your account then you could enter positions of:
10k,20kâŚ30k etc⌠or 0.1,0.2 & 0.3 lots respectively
Yes and no. If you were an institutional trader or market maker on the spot foreign exchange you would not use leverage for your trades (where would you lever ÂŁ100m too?). In that case you are buying and selling real currency so the currency in which you deposit your account becomes very important.
For example, if I was playing around with an institutional currency trading account with a balance of ÂŁ100m (Sterling), then my trading would be buying and selling real currency, so if I wanted to take a view that USD would appreciate versus GBP then I would actually convert my GBP to USD by buying it and holding USD instead for the period of my trade.
However this presents a problem if I wanted to speculate on something like EURJPY. When my account is in GBP. So in that case my broker would agree an exchange rate for either EUR or JPY to GBP and the lend me that currency so that I could buy or sell the other for my trade. What actually happens is that I am lending my broker ÂŁ100m and he is lending me the equivalent EUR for example, so that I can do my trade. This is called the Swap. In this Swap arrangement we agree to pay each other the interest that would have accrued on each of the currencies exchanged.
I would agree to receive the interest on GBP and pay the interest on EUR for example. The difference in these interest rates would be the Swap rate and my broker would automate the process of exchanging the interest rate differentials for the currency pairs exchanged, to either cost me money - if they are lending me a currency bearing higher interest - or pay me money - if I am lending them a currency bearing higher interest.
Better question: Can a newbie retail trader be successful period? Your goal should be to grow in knowledge and skill, so you are no longer a newbie.
âWhen I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.â - 1 Corinthians 13:11
Thank you for your contribution. With the benefit of experience on the institutional FX Market Making operation at Barclays Capital I can tell you definitively that they do not use leverage.
The point is that if you had enough capital to trade without leverage, you wouldnât be using a counterparty broker anyway: youâd be using a direct market access broker.
Unless youâre envisaging opening a very large account, the answer to your question is effectively âNo, you wonât be able to do thatâ.
Note, also, that the leverage figures quoted within accounts are often variable, and that just because a âbrokerâ (i.e. counterparty) offers â200/1 leverageâ doesnât usually mean that you have to use that much leverage. Choose a broker that allows you to adjust it to whatever leverage you want to use.
High leverage in itself isnât dangerous. Itâs the way inexperienced traders use it, combined with their poor understanding and unrealistic expectations and lack of risk-management skills that causes them the problems. But still, in general, itâs a good idea to steer clear of âbrokersâ offering ridiculously high leverage, for exactly the same reason that you should avoid âbrokersâ who offer deposit bonuses and competitions: it tells you specifically what kind of customers theyâre trying to attract, and that in turn tells you enough about the way they do business to know that they should be avoided.
(Whether Barclays Capital trades with or without leverage isnât relevant to what you needed to know, here. ).
Well maybe not. MrDE decide to challenge my position and I felt it necessary to let him know that is was based on something and not just the nonsensical baseless prattle he has the proclivity for.
i can play this game as well it doesnât mean that iâve read the bible
well, actually i have ⌠3 times⌠but, just because i can do this, doesnât mean that iâve read the bible , thatâs the point
and No, iâm not going to do , because itâs late and if i get into this , iâll start seeing scripture in my dreams
so. you have a nice day
Now to the newbies that would put effort into a trade, CAN YOU PERHAPS OFFER SOMETHING ALONG THE LINES OF HE WHO SOWS SHALL REAP THE REWARDS OF HIS EFFORTS
well mate , letâs put aside that POSERS using âitâs not about a salary itâs all about realityâ are just trying to be like the one and only EAZY-E
but that aside
i shall respond as follows
Hell yeahâŚ
We donât need much in life, we just need ourselves and ALL WE ARE IS ALL WE NEED