Risk disclosure

01 Why leverage changes the arithmetic

Leverage lets you control a position much larger than the money you put up. It is usually sold as a way to make a small account productive. What it actually does is multiply the size of every outcome, in both directions, while your capacity to absorb the bad ones stays exactly the same.

At 1:100, a move of one percent against you erases the whole margin behind the trade. Ordinary intraday noise in a major currency pair is that big. The position does not have to be wrong about the market for you to be closed out of it — it only has to move before it is right.

02 The costs that do not announce themselves

A losing position is the obvious risk. The quieter ones are structural and they run whether the trade works or not:

• the spread, paid on entry and again on exit, on every position you take
• overnight financing, charged for as long as a leveraged position stays open
• slippage, when your fill is worse than the price you clicked on
• gaps over weekends and news events, where a stop cannot protect the level it names
• currency conversion and non-trading fees, including charges for doing nothing at all

None of these is unfair. All of them mean a strategy has to be better than break-even before it is even neutral.

03 You can owe more than you deposited

In a fast market a position can be closed at a level far past your stop, leaving a balance below zero. Some jurisdictions require negative balance protection for retail clients and some do not; some brokers offer it voluntarily and can withdraw it. Find out which applies to your account before you need the answer, not after.

04 Where you trade is part of the risk

The instrument is only half of it. Who holds your money matters just as much, and it is the half a reader can actually check:

• find the firm's legal name in the register published by the regulator, not on the firm's own site
• confirm the licence is live, and that it covers retail clients where you live
• read what the licence actually permits — many cover far less than the marketing implies
• check whether client money is held separately, and what happens to it on insolvency

A regulated firm can still be a poor one. An unregulated firm gives you no route to complain to anybody at all.

05 Past performance, forecasts and confident numbers

A track record describes conditions that have already happened. A forecast — including any forecast published on this site — is one view of a future that has not. Neither is evidence about your next trade, and a precise-looking figure is not more reliable for being precise.

Be especially careful with anything promising a fixed return, a guaranteed win rate or a recovery of previous losses. Those are the standard shapes of a scam.

06 What this site is, in risk terms

traderpublic publishes general education and market commentary. It is not licensed to give investment advice, does not give it, and holds no client funds. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything.

Parts of this site are demonstration material — invented broker profiles, invented scores, invented price predictions — and are labelled as such where they appear. Acting on any of it would mean acting on figures that were typed rather than measured. Read the terms of use for the full list.

07 Before you fund anything

Assume the money you deposit is money you may not see again, and size the deposit on that assumption rather than on the outcome you are hoping for. Do not trade borrowed money, money set aside for something else, or money you would have to explain the loss of to somebody who depends on you.

If losses have started to feel like something to win back rather than something to stop, that is the moment to close the platform and speak to someone. It is a recognized pattern, not a personal failing, and support services for it exist in most countries.