Leverage

Financial leverage is borrowed money: a 20% deposit lets you control a whole property, so a 5% price rise becomes a 25% return on your cash. It magnifies losses on exactly the same terms.

The more interesting kinds are labour, code and media. Code and content are permissionless leverage - they work while you sleep and cost nothing to copy - which is why so much modern wealth comes from software and audiences rather than from borrowing.

The mirror is exact. A 20% deposit turns a 5% price rise into a 25% return on your cash - and a 20% fall into nothing at all. Leverage does not improve an asset, it enlarges your position in it, in both directions. The specific danger is leverage on something illiquid: a margin call or a mortgage arrears letter arrives on a schedule that has nothing to do with when you could sell well.

The forms are not equally available. Capital leverage needs money and someone's permission. Labour leverage needs management, which is a skill in itself. Code and media need neither - they are copied at no cost and work while you sleep - which is the whole reason one person can now serve a hundred thousand customers. Pick the kind you can actually obtain this year.