Anybody know this offhand? My Oanda demo account has 50:1. Does it get higher?
In the US, regulated brokers are not allowed to offer more than 1:50 leverage.
In Australia and Europe, it’s 1:30.
Using higher leverage than that is a way to lose money more quickly. Offshore brokers who want most of the customers to lose quickly rather than slowly may choose to be unregulated or “regulated” in a country where the “regulators” are fake/pretend ones who don’t really protect the customers at all.
In the US, they’re not allowed to do that.
In some of Europe they can, so there are - for example - some crooked “brokers” in Bulgaria pretending to be “regulated” in Saint Vincent & The Grenadines (or wherever else they can just pay a subscription for a “regulatory certificate”) and they can offer 1:1,000 leverage if they want to. It’s the single biggest red flag there can be about a “broker”. 
High-risk brokers aim specifically to attract customers naïve enough to imagine that they’re more likely to be profitable with 1:500 leverage than with 1:50 (the opposite’s true) because very long and very profitable experience has taught those sharks that almost 100% of such customers are long-term losers.
Oh wow. I thought Europe was higher for some reason.
Good tip, really!
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