Leveraging Up Intentionally
Hey everyone, Becky here welcoming you back to Market Mamas! In this week’s session, I needed to talk about something that every trader—newer or established—struggles with and has to work through at some point. And that is: leveraging up. That idea of taking on bigger position sizes in each trade or making the choice to copy your trade to multiple accounts simultaneously, thereby increasing your risk and exposure to the market is a really important hurdle to navigate for growing traders! The heart of these decisions though - it really is less about the money and more about trusting yourself as you grow in skill and experience. And yet, if we want to grow as traders— as entrepreneurs in our trading businesses—we can’t stay stuck playing small forever.
The Mindset of Leverage
First, let’s talk about what leveraging up really means. Leverage isn’t just about position size, hold times, or copying multiple accounts simulatneously—it’s trusting your edge. It’s saying and getting yourself to believe, “I’ve done the work, I’ve studied the setups, I understand the risk, and now I’m ready to scale my position responsibly.”
But here’s the thing: leveraging up too early, without the skill to back it up; it can be disastrous. If you have been a trader for more than a minute, then you know how fast wrecking an account can happen! We’re talking minutes for day traders and that’s just the reality of the risk we can get at our fingertips! That’s why it’s essential to combine leverage with discipline and self-awareness in your trading system as well as your personal conditions. You need to be intentional and cautious, not reckless. Just because we can buy accounts that grant us access to trade 10 full sized contracts of the S&P futures indices in any given trade, that does not mean we ought to! For many years, honestly!
Think of it this way: trading larger positions is like turning your business from a side hustle into a full-scale operation. You don’t just hire five people and open three stores on day one—you grow gradually, making sure your foundation is solid. You stabilize your infrastructure, nurture the important relationships that help you grow, learn the ins and outs of every aspect of the business, figure out time management with the required tasks, and achieve base profitability to cover the costs as a minimum startup set of goals. Same with your trading! Nothing that has the potential to make you a multi-millionaire is built to that level in a year. Or even 5. But it can be strong and powerful if you let it take time and build that system well with smart choices from early on.
The Step-by-Step Approach
So let’s make this conversation actionable. How do traders actually leverage up responsibly? Here’s a framework that’s worked for me and many traders I know:
Start with your edge. Before adding size, make sure you’re consistently profitable with smaller trade size. This proves your strategy works. That you know when and how to both enter and exit trades with specificity.
Scale gradually. Don’t double your size overnight. Increase incrementally, observing how your emotions and decision-making hold up. I am warning you right now - every size increase will have an impact on your psychological stability. It just will. So prepare for that.
Adjust your risk, not your size blindly. Know your stop-losses and risk per trade. Leverage doesn’t mean throwing caution to the wind—it means applying risk intelligently. If you take a larger trade - make sure you are factoring in the large dollar amount for the risk as well as the reward! It is easy to just think of turning a $500 trade into a $1,000 trade. But you also need to acknowledge and prepare that the risk on that trade was maybe $300 and now will be $600. Make sure the risk is always still within your account’s tolerance for sustainability.
Review and reflect. After each trade or trading session, ask: “Did I handle this size well? Did I let fear or greed control me?” This direct and honest reflection will help you manage the impact you are experiencing in real time.
Over time, this process builds confidence. You start to trust yourself, which is the most valuable part of leveraging up. The confidence that is required for the next level in your trading that we are talking about today is built through this experience and purposeful and strategic system growth. Actively working through these choices and executions day to day as a trader provides the reps you need to normalize this growth movement, thereby mitigating the fear over time.
“Leveraging up is a skill—it’s trust, discipline, and intentional risk-taking all working together.”
~ Becky Gaskell, Market Mamas
Trading is Entrepreneurship!
Now let’s look at this from a different perspective for a minute. Trading isn’t just a skill—it’s a business. And like any business, growth requires risk. The most successful entrepreneurs don’t stay small because it’s safe—they scale because they believe in their vision and their ability to execute.
Leverage in trading is the same. You shouldn’t stay stuck with micro positions forever, waiting for the “perfect” moment. And honestly, that just isn’t fair to you and the expertise you have been amassing as a developing trader! A time will come for the relentless and dedicated traders, that you’ve built a profitable trading system and, I would argue, that you then deserve to get paid in a more substantial way! To do that, you’ve got to take calculated risks. And yes, losses will happen—but in a controlled way that teaches you more than playing it too safe ever could.
When you push your limits, you find the next ceiling up. And that is your next active challenge to dig into as a developing trader. In this phase, plan for difficulties. It is in the hard times that breakthroughs can happen. You learn more and can break additional ceilings endlessly if you have the grit to persevere through these lessons. In that way, lessons are blessings for the best growth. So, in the game of leveraging up, stay calm and lean into your grit guys!
On a personal note, this episode was at least partially inspired by some changes I have made as a trader and entrepreneur this fall. Maybe you have seen, but this October I officially accepted a role as a trading coach at the awesome prop firm: BluSky Trading Company (https://blusky.pro?ref=mmamas). They are a legit strong option in the trader funding world and I met their owner this summer when I persuaded him to be a guest on this podcast - his name is Mike Tolbert. From conversations with him, we pursued the idea that I could bring some good energy and expertise to his already robust and educational trading livestreaming and content. For my work with them at this point, I join their futures day trading livestream as a co-host a few times a week during the trading session, and I host a psychology lab every Tuesday afternoon live.
The reason why it inspired this episode is that holy moly was this a choice that triggered my imposter syndrome. Sure, I am a trader with 4.5 years of experience and have had a couple years of profitability. But, to livestream and coach - I hadn’t planned for it personally when I received the offer and was honestly taken aback. But, then I had to rationalize it through. Why not me? I have a strong trading edge and read of the markets, I study, trade, and discuss the stock market nearly every day for years, I am wholly passionate about everything around trading, and my Market Mamas podcast is 2 years old this week, which has given me a ton of experience discussing critical components of the psychological element of becoming a profitable trader! Honestly, it was a natural next step if I could sync up with an opportunity just like this. It was an organic growth next level that not only am I qualified for, but I am learning as I embrace it to become better in all my roles as a mutual benefit!
So, by injecting logic into my decision making on this opportunity, it was a no-brainer. I have the necessary skills and experience, I have the passion and interest, I can fit it into my family’s schedule, and I know that my business as a trader is who I am now and this is a natural next phase of it. It was a business leverage up choice. Not so different really than trading with an additional futures contract as a retail day trader. I am adding another role to my diverse trading work and unintentionally, I have been training for this exact opportunity for years. That logical view has been so grounding for me and now that I am deep into this new world, I love it! The people at BluSky are truly so great and I am enjoying growing as a coach within their community. This is entrepreneurship leveraging up in action for me this fall and it’s pretty cool! This is an example of how your passion can blossom when you are relentless in pursuing growth and all the potential of a thing! When you encounter challenges and instead of quitting, you put your head down and work through it, the doors that become visible in the next room you step into can be pretty great!
Alright, before I wrap this topic, let’s pop back to day trading for a moment. I want to share a quick story about a close trading friend. Early in his trading journey, he was very hesitant to add size. He’d take small positions, make small gains, and feel like he was doing something too greedy or without fully deserving it by considering taking it with larger size or copying it to an additional account or two. Then one day, he bit the bullet and scaled up on a trade he had studied inside out and understood throughly—and it went beautifully! He was rewarded much more appropriately finally for the incredible amount of hard work as a developing trader that he had been putting in for years! More importantly, as he settled into this higher position size, even when things didn’t go perfectly, he realized he could handle it mentally and emotionally.
That’s the turning point: when you know you can trust yourself, you can scale with less fear. And in those weeks of adjusting to larger size and using the trade copier, this new and once-was-worrisome level of leverage was now his new baseline. And this level up that he had tackled - it was just one of many, many steps in his long and successful trading career that he is still young in. That push forward was the proof he needed to validate his potential and readiness for it.
So here’s the takeaway: leveraging up is a skill, not just a single move. It’s about trust, discipline, and intentional risk-taking. Don’t rush it for sure, but don’t stay stuck either. Treat your trading like your personal business. Scale responsibly. Learn from every decision and adjustment. And remember, confidence grows with experience—but only if you challenge yourself a little at a time.
Thanks for spending some time with Market Mamas today. If you’re thinking about increasing your size or taking on more risk, do it thoughtfully, and keep treating trading like the business that it is. To those who show up for these conversations, the mental effort and time dedication, you are my people and I would love to get to know you better! Please take a moment to shoot me a comment on https://www.market-mamas.com/contact! Catch you next time! Keep learning, keep growing, and keep trusting yourself. We got this!