Leverage can both help and hurt

With leverage in trading, any gains get multiplied. But so do the losses.

The history of lending has been at least 4,000 years in the making, when merchants fulfilled the role of banks by giving grain loans to farmers and traders. In Mesopotamia, Sumerian temples functioned as both places of worship and banks, and this was where the concept of interest rates first germinated. Temples in ancient Rome both took deposits and made loans; modern banking began in Italy. In the 17th century, the goldsmiths of London began issuing banknotes. And since 1971, when US President Nixon decoupled the dollar from gold, fiat money became the norm. Fast forward to the 1980s, Quicken Loans in the US pioneered online lending. Now, online peer-to-peer platforms let clients skip the traditional bank entirely.