Trading with leverage at Exness: here’s what you need to know

At Exness, leverage and margin requirements follow the same principle we apply across our offering: your money is yours. Beyond 24/7 access to your deposit, this includes removing industry-standard limits that dictate how and when you can use your funds.

While most brokers offer fixed leverage with caps at 1:500 or 1:1000, we’ve introduced virtually unlimited leverage on key instruments, including all forex majors, minors, and gold and silver pairs.

Who is high leverage actually for?

Leverage is often seen as a way to take on more risk, but for experienced traders, leverage provides flexibility and agility. By lowering the margin needed to hold a position, you keep more of your balance free to act on new opportunities. However, the way you use leverage should reflect your strategy and the current market conditions.

Scalpers are generally the most frequent users of higher leverage because their strategy relies on high-frequency trading and catching small moves throughout a session. Without high leverage, a scalper would need a much higher deposit to open positions large enough to make small movements profitable.

On the opposite side, longer-term strategies like swing or position trading typically rely on lower effective leverage. Holding trades over days or weeks means exposure to overnight risk, weekend gaps, and broader macro events that can shift prices before you can respond. Lower leverage reduces the sensitivity to these moves and gives the trade room to develop without triggering unexpected stop-outs.

Ultimately, the traders who get the most out of high leverage are those who already have a defined strategy and are using leverage as a means to execute it more efficiently. Whether you’re a scalper who needs large positions to make small moves count, or a longer-term trader who wants to keep capital free while holding, higher leverage should be used cautiously, and not as a shortcut to bigger results. 

How leverage works at Exness

Leverage at Exness is customizable and often much higher than the industry standard—1:2000 by default on some of our standard and professional accounts. Margin requirements, however, dynamically adjust to reflect your account equity, the assets you trade, and the current market conditions. 

To unlock unlimited leverage on your account, you need to meet the following criteria:

• You must have closed at least 10 positions with a total volume of 5 lots (or 500 cent lots)
• Your account equity must not exceed 4,999.99 USD.

In short, not everyone will qualify for unlimited leverage, and as a trader’s account equity grows, the maximum leverage available to them decreases. 

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It’s important to note that margin requirements for different instruments at Exness will vary as well. Volatile assets, or those that are prone to price gaps, are offered at a fixed or limited leverage to reflect the risk profile of each market.

Forex majors and minors such as EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY, and similar pairs are some of the most liquid instruments in the market. The high liquidity they offer means tighter spreads, more predictable pricing, and lower risk of extreme gaps. This is why they support the highest leverage available for eligible traders.  

Commodities like gold and silver also offer unlimited leverage, but they are highly sensitive to Fed decisions, inflation data, and geopolitical shifts, which can trigger sharp price movements. As with other eligible instruments, Higher Margin Requirements (HMR) may apply during periods of volatility, temporarily increasing the margin needed to open and maintain positions. 

Crypto, stocks, indices, and most exotic pairs carry lower or fixed leverage limits that remain the same regardless of account equity. Because these markets are more prone to gaps and spread widening, their margin requirements and limits during HMR periods are designed to match the underlying risk. This is especially true for crypto pairs which trade around the clock and can experience sharp price movements during periods of market uncertainty. 

To check our margin requirements across all instruments, you can check the contract specifications for each asset on our website or try our Trading calculator. 

How leverage changes during volatility

When you trade with leverage, you need enough money in your account (margin) to act as collateral to keep a position open. As you increase leverage, this margin required decreases. With unlimited leverage, this requirement becomes almost zero, allowing for greater flexibility and control over your strategy.

The trade-off is that higher leverage also increases sensitivity to market movements. A price move that has relatively small impact under lower leverage can have a much larger effect on equity and margin levels when leverage is higher. This may increase the likelihood of stop-outs during sharp volatility.

To help manage this risk, Exness limits the maximum available leverage when market volatility is expected to increase. We call these, HMR (Higher Margin Requirements) periods, and they can apply around major economic announcements, market closures, public holidays, and other market events that may lead to major price movements.

HMR periods are temporary and their duration varies by instrument and the underlying market conditions. Once the HMR period ends, margin requirements are automatically recalculated based on account equity and available leverage.

If you’re trading around high-impact events, it’s worth keeping these temporary changes to margin requirements in mind when planning your position size.  

How to change your maximum leverage 

As mentioned above, leverage at Exness is customizable, depending on eligibility. If you want to change the maximum leverage on your account, you can do so from your Personal Area:

1. Log in to your Exness Personal Area.
2. Select “My Accounts”.
3. Click the three dots on the top-right corner of your trading account.
4. Select “Adjust leverage”.
5. Choose your preferred ratio and click “Confirm”.

It’s important to note that if you set your maximum leverage to a higher ratio than what’s currently available based on your account equity or HMR, the actual leverage applied may be lower. Some  instruments like USOIL offer fixed leverage and are not affected by changes you make to your maximum leverage. 

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More protections against volatility

At Exness, our goal is to remove the artificial limits that hold back a trader’s strategy, while making sure the right protections are in place when markets become unpredictable. 

• Stop Out Protection: A proprietary Exness feature designed to delay and sometimes completely avoid stop-outs that would have triggered due to temporary price spikes.
• 0% stop out level: The industry standard stop-out level is typically between 20%-50%. At Exness, your positions stay open as long as your equity remains above 0%, giving your strategy the maximum possible time to recover or giving you more time to close the position manually or add funds to meet the margin requirements. 
• Negative Balance Protection: If the market moves fast enough that a position closes at a value that would take your balance below zero, we absorb the loss and reset your balance to $0. You will never owe Exness money as a result of a losing trade, regardless of how much leverage was used. 

The best way to see how all these interact with your strategy is to open a demo account and test different leverage and position size combinations under live market conditions. Your leverage needs will change as your account grows, and remember that managing your position size is just as important as choosing the right leverage.

FAQ

What is the maximum leverage available at Exness?

The maximum leverage available for your account depends on your account equity and regional availability. Traders with equity below 5,000 USD have access to the highest leverage, including unlimited if eligible. Visit our Help Center for more information about leverage. 

How do I qualify for unlimited leverage?

Once you’ve closed 10 trades with a total of 5 lots on a real account with equity under 5,000 USD, the option will appear in your account settings.

What protections does Exness provide when trading with leverage?

We offer three key protections to limit the effects of extreme volatility. Stop Out Protection, our proprietary feature, helps delay or prevent stop-outs during temporary price spikes. Our 0% stop out level keeps your positions open as long as your equity remains above zero. Negative Balance Protection ensures your balance can never go negative, regardless of the leverage used.

How can I change leverage on my Exness account?

On the Exness Trade app, go to your account Details, tap Settings, then Max leverage. You can also change your maximum leverage in your Personal Area: log in, click the three-dot icon next to your trading account, and tap Adjust leverage. Keep in mind that instruments with fixed margin requirements are not affected by this setting and will continue to use their predefined ratio, regardless of the leverage selected on your account.