Margin accounts allow investors to borrow against their portfolios to buy more securities. Margin can turbocharge your returns when stocks go up, as profits are made on the full position size ...

Andy Smith is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®), licensed realtor and educator with over 35 years of diverse financial management experience. He is an expert on personal finance, corporate finance ...

In a cash account, all trades must be settled in cash on the settlement date, which occurs two days after the trade date for most securities. A margin account, however, is quite different. If you ...

Margin trading is the practice of investing with borrowed money. It is a high-risk strategy and should only be conducted by experienced investors, which is why most brokerages require you to apply for ...

Julia Kagan is a financial/consumer journalist and former senior editor, personal finance, of Investopedia. Gordon Scott has been an active investor and technical analyst or 20+ years. He is a ...

A longtime Vanguard investor received an email encouraging him to consider opening a margin account. The email included a link to a 20-page paper that explains both the workings of a margin account ...

During periods of economic growth, it’s common to see an increase in margin account use. According to FINRA, margin account debit balance use is up approximately 12% year to date, during which time ...

Portions of this article were drafted using an in-house natural language generation platform. The article was reviewed, fact-checked and edited by our editorial staff. A margin call occurs when the ...

Minimum margin is the amount of funds required to be maintained in a trading account as collateral before trading on margin. It is a requirement set by brokerage firms or exchanges to help account ...

Lyle Daly is a personal finance writer who specializes in credit cards, travel rewards programs, and banking. He writes for The Ascent and The Motley Fool, and his work has appeared in USA Today and ...