What is the Leverage in Futures?

Great question; we tend to get this question from Forex Traders looking to trade Futures with us.  While forex markets offer some of the highest amounts of leverage available to traders if more leverage is what you are looking for, don’t discount futures because it’s harder for us to answer this question than saying, 50:1 or 100:1.  If and when you need more leverage in Futures, it’s as easy to do that by increasing your contract size.

Leverage provides the ability to put up a small amount of money to trade a more considerable amount of underlying value. Typically, suppose you were to trade futures with a broker. In that case, the initial margin is around 20% of the underlying contract (subject to fluctuation based on volatility and price ), so at a 20% margin, you only need to put up $1 to trade $5 worth of goods.  5:1 doesn't sound that great.  The excellent news is Topstep® is NOT a futures brokerage; you do not need to deposit funds or an initial margin to start trading the futures markets. For a small monthly membership (see our live pricing here), you can trade up to 15 contacts.  That leverage is significant!