Trading CFDS with Leverage - How to Still Get High Leverage if you Understand the Risks
Trading CFDs with High Leverage is very risky. You could lose your invested capital.
Now that we have the mandatory risk warning out of the way, we can get to the nitty gritty. Recently in 2018 new rules came out of the EU which restricts leverage and margin for traders who are classed as retail. You can continue to use the old margin and leverage which you had in the past if you qualify as a professional trader, but 99% of us will not meet the requirements. If you need more info on what is required then take a look at your brokers info pages.
So How Can We Continue Trading With High Leverage?
If you are based in the UK, or another European location and are classed as a retail trader, then the only option is to open an account with a broker who falls outside of the EU jurisdiction.
But in our opinion, if you are willing to do this then your money should still go to a safe and regulated environment. We suggest staying away from bucket shops located in Cyprus or exotic Islands that have no regulation.
For instance you can look at Australia, and in particular one of the worlds largest brokers by volume.
IC Markets are fully regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). And they also hold an Australian financial services licence. Which is probably about the safest regulation there is outside of Europe.
IC Markets still offer 500:1 leverage for new accounts opened.
They provide ECN forex trading with really tight spreads starting at zero pips, and a whole bunch of other CFDs such as indexes, commodities, treasuries and more.
It must be said that you can choose lower leverage also, and if you do decide to choose high leverage like 500:1 then please understand that it can be very risky doing so. Whilst smaller margin amounts are required for trading it also means that losses can get very large, very quickly if you don't have a good money management and risk strategy.
But if you are interested maybe it is worth opening a demo account here and starting with their MT4 trading platform or cTrader charts. You will get a feel for their offering without making a cash deposit.