The ads promoting foreign exchange trading have proved to be too irresistible for many Turks over the past several years. Tantalized by the prospect of “turning $1,000 into $1 million,” tens of thousands of greenhorns put all their money into leveraged transactions only to end up flat on their backs.

Leveraged transactions on the foreign exchange market (forex) multiply earnings, but they can also deepen losses, especially for individual investors unversed in financial markets who tend to take high risks in the hope of making quick money. Until recently, the maximum leverage ratio on foreign exchange trading in Turkey was as high as 100:1, which led aspiring millionaires to turn the market into a virtual casino.

The daily trading volume for the global foreign exchange market is more than $5.5 trillion and is dominated by institutional investors, such as financial funds, companies and banks. In Turkey, the market was legally regulated only in 2011. Thousands of Turks with lower and medium incomes ventured into this relatively new realm, using their savings or selling homes and cars to raise starting capital. In several years, “forex fever” pushed the daily trading volume up to $16 billion-$17 billion. To grasp the magnitude of this figure, keep in mind that the daily trading volume at the Istanbul Stock Exchange stood at about $4 billion on Feb. 28.

The main driving force behind the forex rush was the high leverage ratio. Retail investors were able to trade in sums 100 times larger than what they had deposited. The result, however, was devastating.