Leverage tells you how big a positionPositionA single entry held on the broker account, with a direction, a size, and a current floating result.Click the word to learn more the broker lets you control per unit of your own money. 1:30 means thirty units of exposure for every one unit of equityEquityThe live value of your broker account, including the floating profit or loss of open positions.Click the word to learn more.
In the EU, ESMA's product intervention measures cap retail leverage at 1:30 on major forex pairs. Other instrument classes get tighter caps: 1:20 on non-major currencies and major indices, 1:10 on commodities other than gold, 1:5 on individual equities, 1:2 on crypto. The UK FCA mirrors the same limits. Other jurisdictions go far higher: 1:100, 1:500, sometimes more.
The pitch around high leverage is always the same: more leverage, bigger gainsGainsThe sum of every winning position in a period, before losing positions are subtracted.Click the word to learn more. What gets left out is that bigger gains and bigger losses come from the same equation. Price moves the position, not the marginMarginThe portion of your equity the broker sets aside as collateral while a position is open.Click the word to learn more. A one percent move on a 1:30 position hits about thirty percent of your deposited margin, before commission and swap. Run the same move at 1:500 and the math gets ugly fast.
What matters in practice is not the broker ceiling. It is the exposure the strategy actually uses. A well-sized algorithm on a 1:500 broker can run less leverage than a poorly-sized one on a 1:30 broker. The broker setting is just the room the strategy is allowed to move in.
Javlot strategies declare the leverage they were designed against. The broker ceiling is the upper bound, not the operating point.