Currencies are traded in standard lot sizes to facilitate efficient trading on the forex market. The standard retail lot is 100,000 units of the base currency. Most currency dealers offer 10,000-unit mini lots and 1,000-unit micro lots. Some currency dealers offer a 100-unit nano lot. Positions can be sized larger by purchasing multiple lots. Fortunately, you don’t actually need $100,000 in your trading account to buy a single standard currency lot. Currency dealers offer various levels of leverage, allowing you to control full-sized lots with significantly less capital in your account. We discuss margin and leverage later in this chapter.
