Both personal and corporate accounts can have margined accounts. We have one corporate account that does and one that doesn't.

Many years ago I would occasionally use a small amount of margin debt to buy stocks. Don't think I ever have in corporate accounts, just personal account. I don't believe IRA brokerage accounts allow it.

Leverage works on the way up, but doubles up on the way down (kinda like farming). As long as you are making money investing the leverage helps. But in a market melt down instead of your account going to half its worth before the melt down (been there done that) you might be wiped completely out and owe money to the brokerage before they got your account closed out. It has happened, quite a lot back in the day than many have likely forgot of are too young to know about.


My use of debt to buy securities was very minor. Maybe there was something I wanted to buy, was going to sell something else, and used the debt for a few days during the change of positions. I have CD's through my brolerage right now. If I needed the money I could sell the CD's but if it were only a few days away from maturity it might make more sense to pay a little margin interest instead of selling the CD's prematurely. Or if I needed the cash now but didn't want to take gains income till next year I might not sell the security, borrow against my account for current cash, then offset it and pay the interest after the first of the year.

A lot of potential uses for margin debt other than speculation. But an uninformed person that doesn't understand the mechanics and dangers can get in a world of trouble with margin debt. Brokerages are more than happy to loan you money against your stock holdings or cash holdings. They are in the business to make money.

All you gotta do is ask your brokerage to make your acount a margin account. Will probably have to sign a paper or two. Any account that is not eligible (like I think IRA accounts are not) they will just say no.