Trading Large Sums of Money With Leverage, The Forex Elite

Beginner Questions
1

The topic speaks for itself, now of course it is not recommended for a newbie.
I would like to limit this thread toward successful Full-Time traders who understand the art of risk and compounding. But posts from Noob’s are welcome

I would like to know if its possible to trade $50,000,00.00-$100,000,000.00 with 50:1 leverage, 100:1 leverage 400:1 leverage. What about 500,000,000? I have my own personal reasons for asking this. My take is it would require a whole new level of discipline and controlling your own emotions before you would be able to consistently be profitable at that level.

But then one can easily say “hey if you can turn 10,000 into 1,000,000 then of course you can trade $100,000,000 consistently profitably”. Do you think this is true? Lets just say you are risking 1.5% per trade with a 20 Pip standard stop…

1.5%:
50,000,000.00 = 750,000 (20 Pip stop = 3,750 Lots)
100,000,000.00 = 1,500,000 (20 Pip stop = 7,500 Lots)
500,000,000.00 = 4,500,000 (20 Pip stop = 30,000 Lots)

Now it’s to my understanding that when you are dealing at that level with that kind of money its a bit of a paradigm shift to accept the fact that if price hit’s your stop loss you lose 1.5 mil. Lol

But to my understanding at the end of the day its the Law of Numbers in affect. A consistently profitably trading system and right mindset it wouldn’t even matter how large the account is as long as proper risk management parameters are in place account should grow no problem.

My question is is it possible to trade these large amounts with 50:1, 100:1, or even 400:1 leverage?
Are there traders in the world managing large amounts like mentioned above with leverage? (it’s to my understanding that you would need to have an institutional account)
Are there limits to leverage allowed based on account balance?
What type of discipline would be required to be able to trade Forex on that level?

These are real questions I am interested and I have my own personal reasons which I need not disclose to babypips on why I am inquiring about this. I believe the sky is the limit when it comes to this market and you create your own reality. (That doesn’t mean jump in the water full of sharks with your eyes closed naked) But when you achieve a certain level of discipline and when you first make your first 2 mil trading Forex (200 Lots= 2% of acct) that’s when a new reality is realized. But not many people reach that level I call it the “elite level of trading”

Do these Elite Forex traders really exist?
If you are a Forex Elite I would be more than happy to hear from you and hear your words about this.

I would also like to cut down on the dumb immature comments please. Thank you

2

I am not sure if you can trade it with 1:400 leverage as most pro-accounts are leverage much less than that. Having said that, leverage does not matter and it all boils down to risk management. As you mentioned, with the right trading strategy and proper risk management nothing changes to your approach. In case you apply 1.5% you will always do so regardless of portfolio size. Additionally you did not start out with $50M, you worked your way there from a much smaller amount which means you learned to trust your strategy as well as approach over time.

3

Most brokers will not limit your leverage no matter how big, or small, your account is. But, liquidity is an entirely different story. If you simply bought 200 lots at market you would probably be slipped quite a bit. When trading a large account it is important to slowly accumulate positions, ie. instead of simply buying 200 lots you would buy 10 lots 20 times within a range providing you with an average entry price. This is what banks do. You may have noticed that after a trending period there is usually a range. Within this range the smart money is either accumulating a position or distributing their remainder. In order to deal with the emotions of trading a larger account you need to realize your P/L in terms of % rather than monetary amounts.

4

You should split your orders regardless of account size in my opinion. When I trade one lot I split it up in four and enter it withing a range.

5

this becomes about strategy capacity. Trading large size is why dark pools, and block trades exist. First of all you are going to have adverse selection if your trades are in the book, so you have icebergs, growlers, VWAP and other types of algorithmic orders to either A) hide your size or B) target a specific bench marked entry price. There are points where your strategy can no longer handle trading X amount of size, liquidity is finite. For example usually break out trades using stop entries/market entries have less capacity than say retracement trades using limit orders. (this is highly simplified) The reason is as mentioned above slippage. So you have to break up your order and time the market in such a fashion that over time and given the liquidity constraints your average price of your fills is equal to your trigger price. But in the case of a break out, the entire goal is to have price run away and never look back, so your going to end up having a lot of partial fills on the winners and eating the entire boat on the losers, or getting slipped huge on the entire order and it eats into your expectancy.

Bottom line: every strategy and market has liquidity and capacity limits. As you approach those limits profitability degrades. What that is is market and strategy specific, so you can not compound ad infinitum

edit: i forgot to mention the leverage doesn’t matter, its the NAV of your position size that matters.