Pepperstone UK Leverage Levels By Instrument

Pepperstone offers flexible leverage on over +150 tradable instruments. The forex broker is ideal for UK traders, as it is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and viewed as a trusted UK broker. The wide range of instruments offered by Pepperstone UK includes FX currencies, CFDs and commodities. Cryptocurrencies were previously available to UK clients, yet recent changes to FCA regulation have banned retail traders from accessing crypto markets.

Under the ESMA regulation, the available leverage for the UK retail traders is 30:1. However, if you qualify as a professional trader, you can enjoy maximum leverage of 500:1.

View the Pepperstone UK leverage levels by each market below.

Instrument TradedRetail Client LeverageProfessional Client Leverage
Forex30:1500:1
Index CFDs20:1200:1
Gold20:1500:1
Commodities10:1500:1
Equities5:120:1

Your leverage will be fixed per asset traded above due to ESMA rules.

You can qualify as a Professional Pepperstone UK Client if you have adequate experience and knowledge in CFDs, and you meet 2 out of the 3 FCA criteria listed below:

  1. You have carried out at least 10 transactions of significant size ($50k notional) per quarter on average for the last year.
  2. Your investment portfolio exceeds 500k EUR.
  3. You have worked as a professional in the financial sector for at least one year

Note: If you trade under an investment firm or company of adequate size, you may also qualify. Speak to your Pepperstone Account Manager if you think this applies to you.


Our Rating

The overall rating is based on review by our experts

9.17
Spreads
10 / 10
Leverage
10 / 10
Trading Platform
10 / 10
Risk Management
7 / 10
Range of Markets
8 / 10
Customer Service
10 / 10

Forex Trading Leverage

The Forex market is by far the number one choice of traded product by retail traders. The UK retail traders prefer the foreign exchange market to the stock market due to the superior leverage offered by the UK FX brokers. Pepperstone UK offers over 61 currency pairs including:

  • All the major currency pairs
  • Minors currency pairs
  • And some exotic currency pairs

You can execute your trading orders in an environment with deep liquidity from multiple tier one liquidity providers, which makes it possible to get spreads as low as 0.0 pips on their legacy Razor account. If you open a UK Pepperstone trading account, you have the option to choose between two types of trading accounts and both offer up 500:1 leverage on currency trading if you qualify as a professional trader. Pepperstone doesn’t enforce a minimum deposit, but it recommends when opening an account, an initial deposit of £500.

The two Pepperstone accounts with their particular features are outlined below:

Pepperstone Razor Account

It should be noted the Pepperstone offer both CFD trading and the best UK spread betting platform. The latter can have some preference, which is why many UK forex traders prefer trading this way.

Index Trading Leverage

UK Pepperstone offers two types of Index instruments that open up the door to a whole new range of markets that are not accessible to other retail forex brokers.

Index CFD trading has different levels of leverage for both retail traders and professional traders.

InstrumentRetail Client LeverageProfessional Client Leverage
Index CFDs20:1200:1
Currency index CFDs5:1100:1

Index CFDs

UK Pepperstone gives you access to speculate on the price movement of 14 global stock market indices. You can take advantage of index CFDs in a commission-free environment. If you’re a professional trader, you can trade index CFDs with a 200:1 leverage. You have the following available indices on the UK Pepperstone trading platform:

UK Pepperstone available CFD Indices

Currency Index CFDs

With Pepperstone UK, you have exclusive access to trade CFD on the US dollar index. The dollar index is an index that gauges the value of the US dollar against a basket of other major currencies (EUR, GBP, JPY, CAD, SEK, and CHF). You can trade the USDX CFD contract with UK Pepperstone with leverage of up to 5:1 for retail traders and up to 100:1 for professional traders.

Pepperstone Currency Index CFDs

CFD Share Trading Leverage

UK Pepperstone range of share CFDs includes top US companies like Facebook, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, etc. In total, there are +60 share CFDs available for the UK traders with leverage of up to 5:1 for retail traders and up to 20:1 for professional traders.

Pepperstone UK is one of the best share CFD brokers due to not only offering a good selection of stocks but also offers after-market trading hours minimizing the risk on overnight positions. To gain access to equity CFDs, you’re required to open a Pepperstone MetaTrader 5 account.

Commodity CFD Trading Leverage

Pepperstone UK lets you trade commodities with CFDs offering maximum leverage of 500:1 for professional traders and 20:1 for retail traders. You can trade commodity CFDs with an investment as low as £200. There are three types of commodity CFDs available on Pepperstone UK platform:

1) Precious Metals

Pepperstone UK offers you the world’s most popular precious metals. These include:

  • Gold
  • Silver
  • Platinum
  • Palladium

Trading gold and silver through Pepperstone comes with another advantage. Besides being paired against the US dollar, Pepperstone UK offers its customer the opportunity to trade gold and silver against the Australian dollar and EUR as well. In total, you have access to a range of six metal pairs with leverage up to 500:1 for professional traders and up to 20:1 for retail traders.

2) Energy

Energy assets are available as CFDs across all Pepperstone UK trading platforms. Pepperstone UK offers the most traded energy contracts around the world:

  • XTIUSD – Is a commodity-based on West Texas Intermediate crude oil
  • XBRUSD – Brent Crude Oil, also referred as to UK Oil
  • XNGUSD – Natural Gas

Energy CFDs Leverage

Like precious metals, energy in the form of oil and gas can be traded with 500:1 leverage if you qualify as a professional trader or with 20:1 if you’re a retail trader.

3) Soft Commodities

Another asset class that Pepperstone UK offers lower leverage is for soft commodities:

  • 10:1 leverage applied to retail traders
  • 500:1 leverage applied to professional traders

Pepperstone UK can offer through its state-of-the-art trading platform CFDs on 5 soft commodities including the most popular cotton, sugar, and coffee.

Pepperstoe soft commodities CFDs

Cryptocurrencies CFD Trading Leverage

Investing in cryptocurrencies CFDs is possible through Pepperstone UK using a leverage of up to 2:1 for retail clients and respectively 5:1 for professional traders. With Pepperstone UK you can trade the world’s largest cryptocurrencies by market cap including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Dash and Litecoin.

The advantage of trading digital currencies with Pepperstone UK found in our head-to-head comparison with FXCM and OANDA is that you don’t need a digital wallet or exchange to store your coins. Trading cryptocurrencies CFDs carry a higher risk than the traditional currencies due to extremely volatile conditions, limited liquidity, and execution issues.

Pepperstone CFD Cryptocurrency

Pepperstone UK Leverage FAQs

Leverage is needed in the foreign exchange market so you can profit from the extremely small daily currency exchange fluctuations. Leverage allows retail investors to control larger sums of money than their initial deposit and magnify their returns. But, since leverage is like a double-edged sword, it can also magnify the potential losses. Therefore, it’s prudent to implement sound risk management techniques when trading leveraged products such as currencies and CFDs. You can find out more via our UK trading guide here. 

Once you open a Pepperstone live account inside the secure client area, you have the option to change the level of leverage used based on your risk appetite. You have to be aware that a different level of leverage involves different margin requirements.

Under the ESMA new regulations, UK forex retail clients benefit from sizeable protections, including negative account balance protection, 50% margin close-out rule, guaranteed stop losses, leverage restriction between 30:1 to 2:1. Pepperstone UK offers additional risk management tools for currency traders with a low-risk appetite, including sophisticated stop loss order types and lightning-fast order execution of 30 milliseconds. To find out more about Pepperstone’s UK operations, you can find a full review here. 

Summary Of Pepperstone UK Leverage

The maximum leverage for Pepperstone is 30:1 for retail traders as set by ESMA rules. This is the same as other FCA regulated UK forex brokers.

The exact retail trader leverage levels are:

  • Forex = 30:1
  • Indices = 20:1
  • Gold = 20:1
  • Other Commodities = 10:1
  • Equities = 5:1

An active trader generally needs to have placed significantly sizes trades periodically over the past year, have significant cash deposits and financial instrument portfolio and/or have worked in a professional position in the financial sector. These are general guidelines and you should review the Pepperstone website for more exact requirements.

Professional Trader Pepperstone Leverage Comparison

Instrument TradedPepperstone LeverageIG Markets LeverageCMC Markets LeveragePlus500 Leverage
Forex500:1200:1500:1300:1
Index CFDs200:1200:1500:1300:1
Share CFDs20:120:120:120:1
Commodities500:125:1 to 200:1
150:1150:1
Cyptocurrency5:110:120:120:1
Bonds✘✘✘✘
Futures✘✘✘✘
ETF✘20:1✘100:1
Treasuries✘✘400:1✘
Open a demo account >>Visit Pepperstone >>

Outside Of The UK?

This page was designed for UK residences. If you are outside of the UK, you may want to view our high leverage broker section and you can use our international Pepperstone leverage page powered by Pepperstone Group Limited. You can also see our article on how brokers make money to learn more about the operations of any forex broker such as Pepperstone.

Pepperstone Review: Account Types and Customer Support

To start trading with Pepperstone in the United Kingdom, you will need to choose from one of two retail investor account types that offer different pricing structures with tight average spreads. The same maximum leverage is available with both account types.

  1. Standard Account: Commission free trading with forex spreads from 1.0 pip
  2. Razor Account: ECN trading with spreads from 0.0 pips + round turn commission fees

If you are using a Standard Account, MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5) are available as trading platform options while Razor Accounts can choose from MT4, MT5 or cTrader. If you want a diverse selection of trading tools, MT4 or MT5 are recommended as they provide free access to add-on features such as Autochartist and Smart Trader Tools. If you are looking to start social trading, MetaTrader Signals can be used, yet UK traders cannot access popular account mirroring services such as ZuluTrade.

Certain features are the same across both account types, such as:

  • Trading Platform Functionality: MT4, MT5 and cTrader are all available as desktop trading platforms, web trader platforms and mobile apps for Android and iOS devices.
  • Customer Support: 24/5 customer support via live chat, phone and email
  • Execution: No dealing desk
  • Base Currencies: GBP, EUR, CHF and USD (Pepperstone AU offers a greater range of base currencies, including the AUD, JPY, SGD and NZD).
  • Funding Methods: Credit card (Visa and Mastercard) and bank transfer can be used to deposit and withdraw funds via Pepperstone’s Secure Client Area. No e-wallet options like Neteller, PayPal or Skrill are available.
  • Education: Trading platform tutorials, webinars, articles and an intro to forex trading course.
  • Risk Management: Order types to help manage the high risk that comes with trading complex instruments such as forex and CFDs.
  • Regulators: Pepperstone is located in Melbourne, Australia, yet overseen by multiple financial authorities around the world. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA, UK), The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC, Australia), The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), Federal Financial Supervisory Authority of Germany (BaFin), The Securities Commission of the Bahamas (SCB) and the Capital Markets Authority (CMA).

 

About the author: Justin Grossbard

Justin Grossbard has been investing for the past 20 years and writing for the past 10. He co-founded Compare Forex Brokers in 2014 after working with the foreign exchange trading industry for several years. He also founded a number of FinTech and digital startups including Innovate Online and SMS Comparison. Justin holds a Masters Degree and an Honours in Commerce from Monash University. He and his wife Paula live in Melbourne, Australia with his son and Siberian cat. In his spare time, he watches Australian Rules Football and invests on global markets.