The most important thing to understand when talking about leverage is the risk involved. Risk is inherent to any type of trading, however, leverage can cause both magnified profits and losses. It would be prudent for traders to pay particular attention to choosing how much leverage they will use. The leverage ratio should be determined in advance of trading. It is very tempting to trade in a larger size than what was originally determined if you have a streak of winning trades.
Doubling your risk on a one-off basis could benefit a trader if they happen to get that one-off trade right. But get it wrong and a trader could end up facing a much larger loss than usual. To help reduce risks in trading, you should plan out your trading strategy in advance.
Two factors could be taken into consideration when determining what amount of leverage to apply to a portfolio: how much risk to take per trade and how much risk to take per day. Examining this via percentages makes things easier. First, a trader can determine how much risk they are willing to take per day. This involves deciding the maximum amount that you are willing to lose. This could, for instance, be between 1% and 2%. If a trader were using 2% as maximum daily risk, it would take 50 days of bad losing trades in a row to wipe out their capital, which is hopefully extremely unlikely to happen.
A trader should also determine how many trades they want to place per day. This could be a set number or a maximum number. For example, a trader may decide that whatever the market, they will make a maximum of three trades a day. In each case, the trader can divide the percentage they are willing to risk per day by this number.