One of the worst risks of a highly leverade futures trader is a black swan event, a shock that makes the market drop >10% within seconds without the possibility for you to get out. In such a situation, with a highly leveraged futures position, you can lose multiples of the balance in your margin account. You have 100k in your margin account. At the end of the day you lost it all and in addition owe your futures broker >1 million. Talking about risks. This will not happen to you with most regulated CFD brokers. They offer negative balance protection. Put what you need for your margin requirements and not a dollar more in a 400:1 account. Even with the most aggressive trading and the worst Saddam Putein 9/11 shock event you wont lose anything more than the balance in that account. It is not all black and white. Everything has advantages and disadvantages. Most of my trading is futures scalping on CME, but I have also been trading with several CFD brokers without any major problems. In fact I had less trouble with the CFD brokers than with the futures brokers.