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Technology Stocks : Semi Equipment Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Return to Sender who wrote (68735)	6/3/2015 7:06:54 PM
From: Elroy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95622

Most accounts outside of retirement accounts allow the use of margin to buy stocks and options. I know that, but I wonder how they calculate margin debt. I find it hard to believe that individual investors have a cumulative margin debt of $500 billion. There are what - 100 million households in the US, I think less, but that's an easy number. Half (50 million) own stocks. Many via retirement plans and organized plans. Lets say of those half that own stocks, half own individual stock investing accounts, the rest are in funds and plans. That's 25 million individual investor accounts. I'm going to guess 90% of those use ZERO margin. Just my guess, but based on talking with individual I know nobody uses margin. I do, and I'm the only one. So that's 2.5 million investors using some margin loan function. If margin debt is $500 billion, that means the average individual investor has borrowed $200,000 to invest on margin? Maybe. These numbers are just my guesses, but margin seems to me to be more of a hedge fund thing than an individual investor thing, no?