Pepperstone UK Leverage Levels By Instrument
Pepperstone offers flexible leverage on over +150 tradable instruments. The wide range of instruments offered by Pepperstone UK includes FX currencies, CFDs, commodities, and cryptocurrencies.
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 Traded | Retail Client Leverage | Professional Client Leverage |
|---|---|---|
| Forex | 30:1 | 500:1 |
| Index CFDs | 20:1 | 200:1 |
| Gold | 20:1 | 500:1 |
| Commodities | 10:1 | 500:1 |
| Equities | 5:1 | 20:1 |
| Cryptocurrencies | 2:1 | 5:1 |
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:
- You have carried out at least 10 transactions of significant size ($50k notional) per quarter on average for the last year.
- Your investment portfolio exceeds 500k EUR.
- 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.
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:
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.
| Instrument | Retail Client Leverage | Professional Client Leverage |
|---|---|---|
| Index CFDs | 20:1 | 200:1 |
| Currency index CFDs | 5:1 | 100:1 |
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:
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.
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
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.
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 UK Leverage FAQs
Why Is Leverage Needed?
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.
Can Pepperstone UK Leverage Be Adjusted?
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.
What Risk Management Leverage Pepperstone Features Exist?
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.
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
- Cryptocurrencies = 2:1
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 Traded | Pepperstone Leverage | IG Markets Leverage | CMC Markets Leverage | Plus500 Leverage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forex | 500:1 | 200:1 | 500:1 | 300:1 |
| Index CFDs | 200:1 | 200:1 | 500:1 | 300:1 |
| Share CFDs | 20:1 | 20:1 | 20:1 | 20:1 |
| Commodities | 500:1 | 25:1 to 200:1 | 150:1 | 150:1 |
| Cyptocurrency | 5:1 | 10:1 | 20:1 | 20:1 |
| Bonds | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ |
| Futures | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ |
| ETF | ✘ | 20:1 | ✘ | 100:1 |
| Treasuries | ✘ | ✘ | 400:1 | ✘ |
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.
