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Are you prepared to meet margin calls?
If the value of your holding falls enough that you drop below the minimum maintenance margin, the broker can demand that you add additional assets to bring your account back over the maintenance margin. If you can't meet their demand, they can force a sale of your holdings.
In other words, if you are buying on margin,...
21
Well one thing you seemed to not have considered, basing your returns purely on past average returns over 30 years, is that if there is a downturn within your 5 years or so of investing, you may not only not recover your investment returns but you will be getting charged interest as well.
Don't get me wrong, if you think you can take advantage of margin to ...
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Are there factors I haven't considered?
Margin calls.
Your reasoning is all very logical. The issue is when (not if, when) your investment drops such that some needs to be sold or you need to wire in more money. Looking at long period averages is all well and good. Living through the volatility is a lot different, and margin calls are real.
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They will make money from brokerage as usual and also from the interest they charge you for lending you the money for you to buy your shares on margin. In other words you will be paying interest on the $30,000 you borrowed from your broker.
Also, as per Chris's comment, if you are shorting securities through your margin account, your broker would charge you ...
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In a sense, margin leverages losses more than gains. This is related to the dreaded margin call. If you invest with 2x leverage, and your stocks fall 25%, you will be forced to liquidate with a loss of 50%. Your wealth has been cut in half. Even if you start over again with 2x leverage, you now need a 50% gain in your stocks to get back to even (ignoring ...
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The spread is two trades, one of which opens up some risk one of which limits/cancels the risk. There is nothing stopping you from selling part of the spread opening the door to the risk. You're required to have a margin account to open risky positions, even if the specific spread trade you're attempting to open has a risk limiting/cancelling counterpart.
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Margin interest is deductible on Sch A. So my first warning is that if you don't itemize, the deduction is lost.
Assuming you already itemize, it adds to your itemized deductions. If your gains are short term, they are taxed at your regular rate, i.e. your marginal rate same as earned income. If your return is higher than the margin rate, you are in the ...
answered Nov 22 '13 at 20:09
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Yes.
I heard back from a couple brokerages that gave detailed responses. Specifically:
In a Margin account, there are no SEC trade settlement rules, which means there is no risk of any free ride violations.
The SEC has a FAQ page on free-riding, which states that it applies specifically to cash accounts. This led me to dig up the text on Regulation T ...
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It is a question of how volatile the stock is perceived to be, its beta correlation to the S&P500 or other index.
Margin requirements are derived from the Federal Reserve, Self Regulatory Organizations, the exchange itself, the broker you use, and which margining system you are using.
So that makes this a loaded question.
There are at least three ...
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Put more money into the account. You have to demonstrate that you have the cash to back your bets.
If you don't have the money, and you're unemployed, then what are you doing messing around with a margin account? It's time to get back to work.
The only case where the broker might extend this to you is if you had demonstrated success as a trader; such as a ...
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The broker would give you a margin call and get you to deposit more funds into your account. They wouldn't wait for the stock price to reach $30, but would take this action much earlier.
More over it is very unrealistic for any stock to go up 275% over a few hours, and if the stock was this volatile the broker would be asking for a higher margin to start ...
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Margin is a double edged sword. On 50% margin, it's twice as good to the upside and twice as bad to the downside. To succeed with it, you need several ingredients.
First and foremost, you need a plan. Perhaps more importantly, you need the ability to practice disciplined risk management because there will come a day when it will hit the fan. It will ...
4
With your numbers, look at it this way - You borrowed $50. When the stock is $100, you are at 50% margin.
What's most important, is that there's margin interest charged, so the amount owed will increase regardless of the stock price. When calculating your return or loss, the interest has to be accounted for or your numbers will be wrong. For a small ...
answered Feb 19 '14 at 16:30
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There is no margin call.
Inverse ETFs use derivatives that would lose value in the case you describe though this doesn't force a margin call as you may be misunderstanding how these funds are constructed.
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Your broker will charge you commissions and debit interest on your "overdraft" of $30,000. However it is very likely that your contract with the broker also contains a rehypothecation clause which allows your broker to use your assets. Typically, with a debt of $30,000, they would probably be entitled to use $45-60,000 of your stocks.
In short, that means ...
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The initial margin is $5940 and maintenance margin $5400.
A simple search of Comex Gold Margin gives the CME group site. You then need to specify CMX metals to see the margins.
Gold is currently about $1300. A gold future is 100 oz. So the full contract is worth $130K. You want to 'go long' so you enter into a contract for Dec '14. You put up $5940, and ...
answered Jul 21 '14 at 21:24
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This was all luck, that amount of leverage will destroy your account in a single bad trade.
You profit is way less than it should be because you are getting killed on fees.
Take a look at the bitcoin trade, you should have 2,157.30 in profit but you only have 1825.42.
And your currency trades were consistently positions that were worth $400,000 dollars, ...
4
Your question is based on a lack of understanding of margin (I'm assuming that you're talking about the U.S.). Let's start with the margin requirement.
If you want to buy shares on margin, under Reg T, the FRB requires 50% of the value of the purchase (brokers can require more). So if you want to buy 100 shares of a $10 stock on full margin then the ...
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If the short leg is assigned early, the broker cannot immediately exercise the other leg, because the assignment notification process occurs overnight. The offsetting exercise obtains the needed cash or stock, but only the trading day after it was needed, incurring one day's interest. See this question.
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In your example( of Charles Schwab's margin brochure ) when the stock was purchased margin debt was $5000 and Client Equity was $5000 and required Min Equity was $2k, so at that time client can further borrow $5k-$2k= $3k.
When price of the stock rise( if it does ?) , per example, then $7000-$3600 = $3400 can be borrowed. That is additional $400 can be ...
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I called a trade desk with one of my firms and got the answer. Just keeping extra cash in the account is good enough for most futures brokers.
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Most brokers have a margin maintenance requirement of 30%. In your example, it would depend on how much money you're borrowing from your broker on margin.
Consider this:
You have $250, and short AAPL at $500 on margin. This would be a common scenario (federal law requires investors to have at least 50% of their margin equity when opening a transaction). ...
3
The key word you forgot to include from Slide 29 is:
Free-Riding
Investopedia defines free-riding as:
In the context of a brokerage firm, a free rider problem refers to a situation where a client has been allowed to purchase shares without actually paying for them, and then subsequently sells the shares (ideally for profit).
The problem with this ...
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Here is another explanation of an SMA.
SMA refers to the Special Memorandum Account which represents neither equity nor cash but rather a line of credit created when the market value of securities in a Reg. T margin account increase in value. For example, assume the market value of securities purchased at a cost of $10,000 on margin (at 50%) increase in ...
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Two more esoteric differences, related to the same cause...
When you have an outstanding debit balance in a margin the broker may lend out your securities to short sellers. (They may well be able to lend them out even if there's no debit balance -- check your account agreement and relevant regulations). You'll never know this (there's no indication in ...
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In summary:
Cash accounts do not allow short positions, except for covered calls or puts
Day-trading has different restrictions in the two account types
Proceeds from sales are available immediately in margin accounts
Margin will allow you to skate the delay between the start of and credit for a deposit
A margin account is like any other line of credit, and ...
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