Trade Leverage

Median per-trade leverage — the typical entry size relative to equity.

Computed from: Trades list
Scope: Single report
Range: ≥ 0
Direction: Context-dependent

Trade Leverage is how big each position was relative to the money behind it — the notional value of the trade (the full currency value of the position) divided by your account equity (the money in your account) at the moment you opened it. A 1-lot EURUSD trade is worth about $110,000 of currency; if your account holds $20,000, that one trade puts on 5.5× effective leverage — you're controlling 5.5× the money you actually have. This is effective leverage — how much exposure you actually carried — not the maximum your broker allows. (Brokers cap leverage at something like 1:500, meaning they'll let you control up to 500× your money — but that's only the ceiling; this number is where you actually sat.) EquityTruth reports the median of this ratio across all your trades: the leverage of a typical position.

Key takeaways

What it is — the size of each position (its notional value) divided by your account equity when you opened it, taken as the median across all trades. A typical trade's exposure relative to your capital.
Effective, not broker margin — this is actual exposure ÷ equity, not the 1:500 cap your broker allows. You can run 3× effective leverage on a 1:500 account, or 50× on the same account. The broker limit only sets the ceiling; this measures where you actually sat.
It amplifies everything — ruin fastest of all — returns and drawdowns scale roughly in step with leverage; the odds of ruin rise faster. A great return at 2× and the same return at 20× are not the same achievement; the second is one bad gap (a sudden price jump with no trading in between) from a wipeout.
Risk is leverage × stop distance, not leverage alone — leverage sets fragility, but your actual risk per trade is leverage times your stop distance (how far price moves before your stop closes the trade out). A tight-stop trader at high leverage can risk less than a loose-stop trader at low leverage. Read this number next to your typical stop.
Check the spread, not just the median — a trader with median 2× but a p90 of 20× is making rare oversized bets (the "tail" of their bet sizes), and those tail bets are where accounts die. Read the median and the 90th percentile.
In EquityTruth — the median of notional value in USD ÷ account equity at open in USD across every trade. The mean, 10th, and 90th percentiles (lev_avg, lev_p10, lev_p90) ride alongside as the spread. A single value — no per-axis breakdown.

How it's calculated

Trade Leverage = median over trades ( notional value in USD / account equity at open in USD )

notional value: lots × contract size (the units per lot — 100,000 for a standard forex lot) × open price, converted to USD — the full currency value of the position, not the margin posted
account equity at open: the account's equity at the minute the trade opened, converted to USD

In this product: This is effective leverage (exposure ÷ equity), not broker margin leverage like 1:500 — a position can run 3× effective on a 1:500 account. Equity at open is floored at 10% of the median positive equity so a momentary near-zero equity reading (e.g. a brief margin spike) can't produce an absurd leverage value. The median is the headline because it's robust to a few oversized trades; mean, p10, and p90 are reported alongside as the spread. A single value — leverage is inherently a money/notional concept, so there's no Return or pips% version and no per-axis split.

What it tells you

Leverage on its own isn't "bad" — it's only dangerous relative to your edge and your stops. A high-leverage scalper with tight stops can be far safer than a low-leverage martingale (a strategy that doubles down after losses) with none. The "wipeout" figures below assume the position runs unstopped — a stop changes the picture entirely (see the next section). Read the band as a measure of fragility — how little room you have for error — not as risk itself.

A reality check before the bands: real retail forex routinely runs 10–50× effective leverage without realising it. A mini account ($1–2k) trading even half a lot is already deep in the "very high" band. Institutional desks sit in low single digits. So most retail traders live in the rows labelled fragile/extreme below — that's not exotic, it's the norm, and it's precisely why leverage is the single biggest predictor of a blown retail account.

Value	Reading	Notes
< 1×	Unleveraged / cash-like	Position smaller than your equity. Rare in forex; very conservative.
1× – 3×	Moderate	Professional / institutional sizing. Survivable through normal volatility and most gaps.
3× – 10×	Aggressive	The disciplined end of retail. Workable with tight stops; punishing without them.
10× – 30×	Very high — fragile	Where much of retail actually sits. A ~3–10% unstopped move is a large-to-terminal account hit, and a gap can leap your stop. Normal — but lethal without disciplined exits.
> 30×	Extreme — one gap from ruin	A ~3% unstopped move (1 ÷ leverage) wipes the account, and a weekend/news gap can blow through any stop. Survival depends on never being caught wrong at size.

The median is calm — 2× — but the p90 is 10× larger. Those rare 20× bets are where the account actually dies. Always read the median next to the spread, never alone.

Worked example

You buy 1 lot of EURUSD (contract size 100,000) at 1.10. The position's notional value is 1 × 100,000 × 1.10 = $110,000. On a $2,000 account that's 110,000 / 2,000 = 55× effective leverage — a 1.8% move against you, unstopped, and the account is gone. Run the identical trade on a $50,000 account and it's 110,000 / 50,000 = 2.2× — the same position, but now a routine, survivable bet. Same lot size, same instrument, wildly different risk. This is the trap: a "small" 1-lot trade feels small, but leverage is set by your equity, not by the lot. The median of these ratios across all your trades is your Trade Leverage.

Leverage is only half of risk

Leverage measures fragility, but your real risk per trade is leverage × the distance to your stop:

55× leverage with a 0.1% stop risks 55 × 0.1% = 5.5% of the account per trade — aggressive but survivable and repeatable.
5× leverage with a 2% stop risks 5 × 2% = 10% — more per trade, despite far lower leverage.

So higher leverage can mean lower risk if the stop is tight enough. What high leverage really does is compress your room for error: it leaves no space for a wide stop, and it makes you fragile to the one thing a stop can't save you from — a gap, where price jumps clean over your stop (weekend opens, news prints, the 2015 CHF break). That is the single case where high leverage equals high risk even with a stop in place. Read Trade Leverage next to your typical stop distance, never alone. The leverage that actually maximises long-run growth for a given edge is a separate question — see Kelly Criterion.

Leverage and your other metrics

Leverage is the lens you read every other performance number through. A 30% return at 2× is a genuine edge; the same 30% at 30× is a coin flip that happened to land — and would have ended the account just as easily. Pair this metric with max drawdown and the return figures: high leverage plus a deep drawdown is the signature of a near-miss with ruin — the account survived this time, but the margin was thin. Low leverage and a strong return is the genuinely impressive — and repeatable — result.

Pitfalls

Pitfalls & caveats

Effective ≠ broker margin leverage — the #1 confusion. This is exposure ÷ your equity, not the 1:500 your broker allows. The broker limit only caps how high you can go; this measures where you actually sat.
The median hides the tail. Median 2× looks tame, but a p90 of 20× means rare huge bets — and those tail trades are where accounts die. Always check the p90, not just the headline median.
Leverage isn't bad per se — and isn't risk by itself. Real risk per trade is leverage × stop distance, so a tight-stop scalper at 55× can risk less than a loose-stop trader at 5× (see Leverage is only half of risk above). What high leverage always costs you is room for error and exposure to gaps. Don't read the number in isolation.
Relies on quote→USD conversion. Notional is computed in USD using M1 quotes; missing or thin quote data makes the figure unreliable for the affected trades.
A near-zero equity moment is floored. Equity at open is floored at 10% of the median positive equity, so a momentary margin call doesn't blow up into an infinite leverage reading — the floor is deliberate, not a bug.
It says nothing about correlation. Ten trades at 2× in highly correlated pairs behave like one 20× bet. Leverage measures per-trade size, not how the positions move together — cross-reference return correlation and exposure overlap.

Turnover is the sum of leverage across all trades · Max Drawdown is the risk leverage amplifies · Profit Concentration is the same tail-bet fragility on the profit side · Return Correlation reveals when many small bets are secretly one big one.