[I’m not your financial advisor. I don’t know your financial situation, and this is not financial advice. Leverage is a double-edged sword. Don’t Bet the Farm.]
Depends on what you need it for. 3x ETFs are probably plenty for a basic risk premium portfolio. LEAPS might have more variety, but you have to buy 100 share increments (which makes it harder to balance in a small account), and you have to deal with vega risk and occasional rolling hassle and costs.
Portfolio margin is probably the best way overall. But I haven’t seen it available for less than a $100,000 account. You can get almost 2x on an ordinary Reg-T margin account though. Brokers may charge outrageous amounts of interest for margin loans. You can sort of work around this by financing with box spreads.
Outside the US, you can probably get 5x on CFDs. I can’t trade them, so I haven’t looked into them too much.
Leverage up to 20x is easy to get for Forex (and maybe 50x for the major pairs), because Forex volatility is so low, you need a lot of leverage to bother with it. But the market is mature and efficient enough that I don’t recommend trading it without some automation. Grinding out an edge that small is really tedious if you have to do it manually.
The best way to get leverage
[I’m not your financial advisor. I don’t know your financial situation, and this is not financial advice. Leverage is a double-edged sword. Don’t Bet the Farm.]
Depends on what you need it for. 3x ETFs are probably plenty for a basic risk premium portfolio. LEAPS might have more variety, but you have to buy 100 share increments (which makes it harder to balance in a small account), and you have to deal with vega risk and occasional rolling hassle and costs.
Portfolio margin is probably the best way overall. But I haven’t seen it available for less than a $100,000 account. You can get almost 2x on an ordinary Reg-T margin account though. Brokers may charge outrageous amounts of interest for margin loans. You can sort of work around this by financing with box spreads.
Outside the US, you can probably get 5x on CFDs. I can’t trade them, so I haven’t looked into them too much.
Leverage up to 20x is easy to get for Forex (and maybe 50x for the major pairs), because Forex volatility is so low, you need a lot of leverage to bother with it. But the market is mature and efficient enough that I don’t recommend trading it without some automation. Grinding out an edge that small is really tedious if you have to do it manually.