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What are the pros and cons of trading in low leverage high volatile markets over high leverage low volatile markets

Personal Finance & Money Asked by PhilipFisher on December 29, 2020

I am comparing traditional stock markets with the Forex market here.

I have noticed stock market have relatively limited leverage but have more change % as well as as volatility. On the other hand, 1% change is a big thing in forex market but they are highly leveraged.

Are their pros and cons of trading one type of instrument over other?

2 Answers

Forex is like trading two stocks against each other in a way.

  • Where stocks have a company's financial reports, forex has a country's report. But stocks can also be affected by a country's economical health (Apple for example since it is a large part of the SP500 index)
  • There is a US Dollar Index (58% is EURUSD) which can be traded as "the USD".
  • The forex market doesn't close except on weekends.
  • Stocks are generally only traded on one exchange, forex is traded on multiple exchanges. This means that volume can't be calculated easily for forex.
  • Forex is way more liquid and will have much tighter spreads in general.

Answered by Worthy7 on December 29, 2020

Speaking generally:

  • Lower leverage means risk is better controlled. In the simplest case, an unleveraged long stock position (no matter how volatile) cannot lose more than what you put in. Higher leverage on a less volatile asset may be calibrated so that your expected exposure to volatility is the same, but there is more room for unexpected volatility to wipe you out.

  • A less volatile asset may be less likely to move enough in a short time to overcome the bid-ask spread, making trading less profitable. However, your particular example (forex) is highly liquid (small spreads) so this is not much of a problem.

Answered by nanoman on December 29, 2020

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