jcl, thanks for your reply and the wonderful job you guys did in creating Zorro.

I agree with you that it's quite probable IB clients' low leverage is a main reason behind IB's high ranking in the cited report.

However, if I understand it correctly, the report only compared retail Forex accounts. Other types of trades at IB are not included. Therefore, retail Forex alone, lower leverage seems to benefit (at least for the average traders).

While I understand with a statistical positive edge and proper capital management, higher leverage helps, I'd rather start from lower leverage and build my confidence in the mere existence of a positive edge gradually. That alone I can achieve by using less margin relative to my capital. However, I'd also like to start in an environment that my fellow traders at the same broker also have lower leverages, so their mistake won't blow up the whole broker and screw my account (I might have worried too much after the Swiss Franc event I admit :-))

So my key question is: Do you think it's possible to develop viable Forex strategy under IB with lower leverage and large lot size, and why?

P.S. Just to clarify why I still want to trade Forex without the very high leverage: Forex trades 24 hours a day for 5 days a week, which gives me a nice (almost) continuous price history to analyze, and the freedom to get in/out whenever an opportunity/risk arises. The only other instrument coming close to this is futures, but the granularity of risk management is quite coarse there. For example, one single ES contract value changes by $12.5 with 0.25 change in the price (that's only 1 tick); there are smaller contracts but they are not liquid enough.

Thanks!
-Zhong