Leverage Trading in South Africa

Leverage Trading in South Africa

Leverage is the capacity to open a considerably larger position relative to your capital’s value. You may expand your ZAR’s trading power with enhanced positions when using leverage. Leverages are risky by nature. There is never any certainty as to how they will end. In case a trade moves in your favour, your gains are multiplied thanks to leverage. Multiplying losses, however, are also within leverage capacities. Leverage trading in South Africa is a journey worth taking. 

Luckily, trustworthy trading brokerages prevent losing more than the investor has deposited. Negative balance protection ensures this. In addition, South African traders can access a diverse range of financial instruments. These include FX options, indices, cryptocurrencies, commodities, ETFs, and CFD equities. 

Conventional trading models concentrate on buying the underlying financial instrument, watching for price appreciation, and selling it. So naturally, it is wholly possible to short sell financial instruments by hedging against the price. Any good broker provides leveraged derivatives products or CFDs in case you just buy/sell contracts on the basis of price movements. 

Leverage may be provided per legally admitted quanta, under the aegis of the South African regulator FSCA. It needs traders to make a deposit. The margin requirement is the same as this deposit. Traders, in an unleveraged position, would deposit precisely the amount they are capable of trading. They stand to get an equivalent trading value of financial instruments. R10,000 in capital affords exposure to R10000 in unleveraged position financial instruments. 

Nevertheless, in a leveraged position, you ought to be able to deposit R100 with R10000 exposure. The capital/exposure ratio shows your margin percentage. Here, it is R100/R10000, or 1% margin. Of course, the modest your margin requirement, the bigger the leverage offered by the broker. In this instance, it is 100:1 leverage. Generally, the best practice is to limit leverage per its affordability. You may find leveraged positions across diverse financial instruments, like currency pairs, indices, and stocks. 

Leverage Trading in SouthAfrica: merits of leverage

  • ‘Gearing’ up for trading 

You free up valuable capital for investments elsewhere when you commit a tiny amount of your capital reserves to CFD stocks trading with leverage; 

  • Short selling stocks

Many South African traders recognise the volatile nature of the Pandemic times. Market watchers observed amplified short-selling activity that occurred in 2020 and 2021. The Pandemic led to massive layoffs, shuttering of a large number of SMEs, worldwide demand and supply decline. faced by such narrative sentiment, speculators generally use leverage to short stocks benefit accordingly ; 

  • Possibility of greater ROI

Leveraged positions are of benefit when trades finish in the money. Moreover, you simply invest a small percentage of trade value in deriving maximum yield. Obversely, margin calls can sell the underlying financial instrument to reclaim resultant losses. You may have to make a further deposit so that a position remains open; 

  • Leveraged trades may be made 24/7 in some markets

Even as stock markets generally trade from 9.30 am to 4.30 pm EST every weekday, markets like currency pair trading, cryptocurrency, and definite indices are available 24 hours. South Africans stand to gain from this ; 

  • Hedging tools galore

When you begin trading with leverage, there are a number of superlative protection measures open to you, like negative balance protection, stop-loss orders, and guaranteed stops that shield against slippage/gapping. 

Leverage trading, or margin trading, is a system permitting the trader to open positions much larger relative to his own capital. As a result, the trader only has to invest a particular percentage of the position, impacted by many factors and changes between brokers, instruments, and platforms. 

Popular amongst brokers and traders, leveraged trading is a common trading system these days. Leverage implies the ratio between the position value and the investment needed, while margin is the position percentage required. 

Leverage Trading in SouthAfrica: can you trade with leverage? 

There are a significant number of advantages attending you if you decide to trade with leverage. 

  • Absolute value for money

Leveraged trading minimises the capital that has to be invested. Rather than pay an instrument’s full price, the trader may pay just a fraction of it. For example, in case a position’s value, opening time is $3000. Rather than pay the whole amount, he may use a 400:1 leverage. The implication would be that, for every $400 in actual value, he will be asked to invest $1 of his own capital. Hence, for this position, he would require $7.50 to open it ; 

  • Certain instruments are really affordable

Some instruments are so cheap as to be nearly universally affordable. Nevertheless, there are some deemed rather prestigious. Contingent upon their traded frequency and suchlike factors, they are on the expensive side. Rather than invest considerable amounts in participating in their markets, one may use leverage and benefit from saif instruments’ price fluctuations; 

  • Good response to risk management measures

Leverage trading or margin trading has less capital involved. This might be of benefit to many traders. However, there’s a risk element here. You can lose to the same extent you gain. Keeping track of opened positions, it is vital to apply stop loss and such market order to preempt large scale losses. 

Leverage Trading in SouthAfrica: retail clients 

Suppose the price of one troy ounce of gold is $1327. The trader thinks the price is appreciating and wishes to open a large buying position for ten units.the total position price is $13270. This is too large an amount to risk, but such amounts are generally not readily available with most traders. Thanks to a 20:1 leverage provided by your goof broker, the amount will get reduced dramatically. The implication is that for each $20 worth in the position, the trader will be investing $1 out of his account, , which translates to just $663.50.

Money management 

When we are determined to open a trading position, we have to have info regarding applied margin, target definition, and a maximum loss with stop loss. This would automatically decide our position to preempt losses by closing the position. A rule of thumb would never be risking more than 5% of the capital in one operation. 

Opt for the best leverage 

Going for suitable leverage is contingent upon several factors. Primarily, it depends on your funds, but also on your risk management skills and your chosen trading style. In case you trade on a short term basis, your perspectives of gains are not high.  

Traders gain targets generally between 5-10m pips, with scalping. Thus, you have to use significant leverage to obtain maximum gains. Conversely, if the investment’s scope is long term, it is advisable to use weak leverage to make sure contrary market movements do not impact your investment. Long story short, to opt for the best leverage, you will have to define your investment period and study the volatility.  

Dealing with a margin call 

You have decided to go for Leverage Trading in SouthAfrica. Now, it is vital to see that it can potentially precipitate losses higher relative to your capital in some market situations. The increase in position size, thanks to the effect of leveraging, will permit you to multiply your potential losses gains and possible losses. 

If you don’t have any funds available anymore, you cannot open any further positions. You will either have to either fund your account to increase your available funds or close a part of positions to diminish the need for coverage. 

When approaching your position’s progress from the wrong direction, your required coverage will have to be higher relative to your current account balance, with available funds being negative. Such a scenario could lead to a margin call. Your broker will ask you to either add funds or clear a fraction of your positions. 

If your position is not established swiftly, the broker will close all or part of your positions. In the event of a gap, it’s possible that the broker is not able to close your position. When that happens, you may be facing a negative account balance. 

Leverage trading to excess: caveats 

Now we have to ponder the extent to which leverage trading can be a double-edged sword for the trader. Leverage tends to enhance profits and losses by the same magnitude. The more the leverage amount of the capital, the more the risk you would be assuming. However, this risk is not necessarily connected with margin-based leverage. It can, though, cast a shadow if you are not careful. 

Let’s mull over a hypothetical scenario. Trader A and Trader B, with trading capital of $10000, trade with a broker with a 1% margin deposit requirement. Both reach concurrence that USD/JPY has seen its best days and is slated for a fall in value. Both of them short the forex pair at 120.

Trader A opts to apply 50 times real leverage on the trade by shorting $150000 worth of USD/JPY. The basis is the $10000 initial trading capital. Since USD/JPY stands at 120, one pip of the forex pair for one standard lot is close to $8.30. Hence, one USD/JPY pip for 5 standard lots is worth close to $41.50. When the forex p[air appreciates to 121, Trader A will lose 100 pips on the trade, equalling a loss of $4150. This loss would stand for a staggering 41.5% of the trader’s total trading capital. 

How does leverage trading benefit you? 

A significant benefit is that proper usage of leverage permits the trader to sidestep the immobilising of all of his money on a trading account. Rather, he can easily place the remainder on an interest-bearing account. Thus, your risk management strategy could rightly stipulate that you do not deposit all of your trading capital into your account. 

In the main, leverage trading is useful for adapting your risk-taking into consideration of market volatility. Adjusting the leverage permits the trader to work a constant risk range. For example, the trader may opt to artificially increase his position sizes in a low volatile market, benefitting from a low variation level. Conversely, bearing high volatility in mind, the trader will opt to constrict the leverage used to diminish his exposure to the market. 

Is Leverage trading in South Africa safe? 

90% of individuals who trade these markets break even at best. Moreover, the lifespan of most traders who trade highly leveraged markets is measured in weeks and months. There is always a stream of new zealot traders eager to try their hand at leverage trading. The marketing campaigns urge you to take up the challenge. 

Suppose there’s a business plan where you could forecast that the mass of traders will lose most of the money in their accounts. This is the harsh truth – for those who are on the scene unprepared. 

Preparedness for leverage trading in South Africa entails a lot of work on your part. One elementary strategy to deal with the volatility and succeed at leverage trading is to allocate 90% into a medium to a long term portfolio. Then, you can invest the remaining 10% in leveraged markets. 

The pith of the strategy is to have the 10% apportioned to trading short term, highly leveraged markets to snatch equal or better outcomes relative to the other 90%. 

Conclusion 

Leverage trading is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is good since it permits investors with less cash to amplify their buying power. This can increase their returns from successful investments. But, conversely, leverage trading amplifies your losses as well. So ultimately, getting to be good at leverage trading would be an indicator of how passionate you are about trading. 

Trading takes a lot of perseverance, stamina, energy – not to mention some trading aptitude. But, if you can climb up that hill, the skill to deal adeptly with leverage trading will place you at the summit. 

ABinvesting is the leading online broker that offers the best trading services with maximum leverage. It offers more than 350+ trading instruments from different financial markets. Also, find what is InvestBy?

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