This is a knowledge based question, please jump in if you have some personal specific knowledge or information that you can share & discuss.... Thanks Ignoring any investment methods, aside from margin, borrowing to invest, how is high 20x+ leverage possible? Little is known on the specifics of how Jim Simons Renaissance Technologies Medallion Fund achieves the high returns. In the book by Greg Zuckerman on Simons 'The man who solved the market' mentions 27x leverage. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/557104/the-man-who-solved-the-market-by-gregory-zuckerman/ I have tried to find out or figure how it possible to get such high leverage for regular Mom & Pops. Anyone have any insight, information or suggestions?
Your question isn't clear. Using a few offshore brokers, you can get up to 1:500 leverage. In the case of Forexchief broker, 1:1000 is the highest leverage you can get. I don't know any broker that gives higher than that.
Thanks for your reply specific to stock market investing, not forex or crypto where or how is it possible for mom & pop to get high leverage 20x+ for investments/trading?
Cme spreads. A future is around 20x as is. Long one short another and margin goes down while leverage goes up.
Forex is 50x to 500x. @minmike gave a great example because at those levels, your strategy has to have some variance reduction built in.
%% And the fact no or low % ofstock brokers do ads on that, is a big hint. Meaning =since any broker hasa financial interest in your trading size/bigger/bigger comission. BUT not blowing out the account with margin calls and or negative balance....................................................................................Same principle; mortgagebrokers/banks have a much higher foreclosure rate with no money down.
You may be mixing professional trading with retail trading, asking about how retail traders can achieve the same leverage as professional traders. You also don’t know what was the time frame when Rentech used that leverage because they don’t disclose their current trading methods while 20 years ago all the big money was made with high leverage. Right now I’m not sure why Rentech would need large leverage when they have many edges, trade options, etc. They could also setup credit lines with banks, and use whatever other tools that billion $dollar firms can use. Basically I mean that your question looks like “how do I drive my Chevy at 250 miles per hour because I saw a Ferrari driving that fast”. One has nothing to do with the other.
thanks for taking the time to respond along with the comparing retail to professional/institutional investors. my OP was a down to earth honest basic question of 'how a retail [mom/pop] investor' can get high leverage ... simple question. the reference that I made to Rentech, was just a reference & thanks for the details. anyone have a simple response to my OP that has achieved high leverage for stock market trading - not forex or crypto? up thread someone suggested CME trading, maybe mini futures, but that's not what I was thinking - just simple [how complicated can it be] leverage used/for stock market trading/investing.
Option spreads on equities. Bull call spread, $54 risk, $2500 return, I got out at $2400 two days before expiration. Leverage is 44 times reward to risk. Just remember this trade had like a 2% statistical probability of working out in my favor. I originally had my limit order in at $.76, it filled at $.54 wish I would have made that order 10 contracts. They are out there, just keep your eyes open.
So I was just looking at my SPX options, and it appears that I control $66 million dollars with only $17K worth of options. That's almost 4000:1 of leverage, if you'd want to look at it that way. Though actually you can just buy a $0.10 option that controls 100 shares of any expensive stock and that's also a huge leverage.