How Margin Borrowing Can Supercharge or Destroy Your Investments

I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab.
Well, if you've been on your money rehab game for a while now, you know that making smart investments can grow your money year over year. And you don't need a lot of money to start investing.
But because whatever you compounds the more money you invest the better that's where margin borrowing comes in margin borrowing is a money move that can give your brokerage account a financial boost but it's not as picture perfect as it seems so what exactly is margin borrowing to begin with you can think of it as your brokerage's way of saying hey you've got some amazing investment ideas I can lend you some cash to make those happen. At a top level, you're borrowing money to buy stocks and putting the stocks that you already own up as collateral.
So if you've got your eye on 10K worth of stock, but you only have five grand on hand, margin lets you borrow the rest to make the full purchase. It's like getting a bigger shovel to scoop up more of the market.
It sounds a little weird to put your investments up as collateral, but it's no different than using your house as collateral for a loan or paying a security deposit on a hotel reservation. You're offering an asset as a guarantee to a lender.
In the context of margin borrowing, it means that you're borrowing money from the brokerage and using your existing stocks or other eligible securities, depending on what you're investing in, as collateral. So your brokerage kind of becomes like the guy behind the counter at the pawn shop.
But instead of your jewelry, you're using your stock holdings to secure a loan. You tell the broker, hold on to these shares for me.
I promise to repay you what I borrow. But if I can't, these shares are all yours to sell to recover your money.
You're essentially agreeing to let the broker use your current investments as a safety net. And by doing that, you're reassuring the brokerage that it won't be left in a lurch if things go south.
This is a new way to think about your brokerage that is totally legit. Your brokerage isn't just the home of your investments.
Your brokerage can also lend you money. Just like your bank might lend you money to buy a house, your brokerage lends you money to buy securities.
This service allows you to amplify your purchasing power in the stock market of course this kind of lending isn't a free-for-all you enter into a margin agreement when you set up a margin account this agreement outlines what you can do the interest rate on your borrowed funds and the brokerages terms for potentially selling your securities collateral if you can't meet a margin call a margin call happens if the value of your collateral, the securities that you bought plus any others in your margin account, drops below a certain point, the brokerage will ask you to deposit more money or to sell some of your securities to balance out what you owe. This is the brokerage's way of ensuring that the loan remains secured.
More mathiness in just a sec but first i should mention your brokerage

also isn't just going to give you money for funsies it's a loan which pretty much always means

interest payments the interest rate on margin borrowing for investments can vary depending on a whole mess of factors like which brokerage firm you use the amount you want to borrow the market conditions generally the interest rates on margin loans are calculated based on a broker's base rate plus a certain percentage that can increase as the amount of borrowed money goes up. That all translates to rates landing between below 2% to over 9%.
For larger brokerages, you might see lower rates due to the ability to lend at more competitive terms. It is really important though for you to check specific rates offered by your brokerage as these often change based on shifts in the broader financial

landscape like changes to the federal reserve's interest rates which by the way just kept steady

this week hey yo so playing on margin comes with some perks it supercharges your buying power and allows you to snatch up more shares than cash alone could grab and that gives you a bigger shot at bigger

returns by doing all that you're maximizing your investment opportunities if you see a stock or a

fund that you think is a great opportunity but you're short on cash margin has your back and that enables you to act quickly and to snag those shares before the opportunity disappears and you get ultimate flexibility with margin you don't need to wait for the funds to clear like you would depositing cash from a bank and you don't need to sell assets to wait for that transaction to post you can get up and running pretty quickly with margin and now that we've covered that base let's talk about the risks because they are significant just like margin can amplify gains it can also magnify losses too a dip in in stock prices might just be, oh, whatever, in regular scenarios. We know that, right? The stock market goes up, the stock market goes down.
That's kind of its thing. But a dip in stock prices when you're borrowing money, that's not a, oh, whatever.
That's more of a, oh, you know what. And then there's the dreaded margin call I alluded to earlier.
This is definitely the worst case scenario of margin borrowing. If your investments dip below a certain value, your brokerage will call your debt, asking you to add more cash or securities into your account pronto.
If you can't meet a margin call, they might just sell your stocks to cover it, potentially causing you to cash out at the worst time. And brokerages typically have a hard and fast rule around how low your investments need to dip before they can issue a margin call.
Typically, they require 30% for what's called a maintenance requirement. But this concept is a little easier to follow with a number trail, so let's use your 10k investment again as an example.
Say your brokerage requires that 30% maintenance requirement. you put in 5k plus another 5k from your brokerage as a margin loan.
So your brokerage has 50% equity in that investment, right? Half of your investment is theirs until you pay it back. If whatever you invested in drops and your 10k is now worth only 6k, the investor equity has also dropped to 1k or the 6k value minus the 5k loan or just 17 of your total investment but your brokerage has that hard and fast rule that they need to have at least 30 equity in your investment so this drop would trigger a margin call and when that happens your brokerage is going to need you to give them 30 of that new 6k value which is 1800 bucks.
You do have some time to come up with this money, but it's not a lot of time. It's around two to five days.
And in order to come up with that money, you could either deposit 1800 bucks into the account, or you could sell other investments in order to put money into the account, or you could deposit more marginable securities, which is a little bit more complicated. But the big picture here is you're gonna have to come up with the cash at a time when your investments are down.
And if you needed to borrow on margin anyway, you probably don't have a lot of liquid cash. So this whole story adds up to being a pretty ugly picture at this point.
To play it safe on the margin tightrope, you need to know your limits. Just because you can borrow a lot doesn't mean you should.
Assess your own financial landscape and decide how much risk you can comfortably handle. And while I prefer less risky strategies where you don't need to keep your eyes glued on your brokerage account, with margin borrowing, you do need to keep a close eye on your investments and your account balance.
Setting alerts for significant market moves can help you react quickly and wisely. For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank.
If you do want to try a margin loan to get the best terms possible, you should compare margin rates at different loan amounts because the rates can be tiered based on the margin balance. But always, always remember that while borrowing on margin can amplify those gains, they can also magnify those losses.
Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lapin..
Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes.
Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me.
And follow us on Instagram at Money News and TikTok at Money News Network for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you.

No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself,