ASIC said it commonly sees leverage ratios of between 200 to 1 and 500 to 1 for CFDs, which magnifies fees and costs and leads to greater losses.
It said it would introduce CFD leverage limits for currency pairs of 20 to 1, equity indexes of 15 to 1 and commodities 10 to 1 (except gold, which will be set at 20 to 1).
The limits recognise the products can be used for legitimate risk management purposes.
