What did it maen to buy stocks on margin?
You buy some with debt on other stocks. If you have taxable brokerage account with lots of stocks you can buy more and they will lend you about have the value of your portfolio to pay for them. You can also use a margin loan to buy other things but the interest isn’t really cheap. My friend had a lot of stock and her broker suggested instead of selling shares to buy a car she take a loan using her stock as collateral. If her stock value went down they would call her to bring money or they will sell the stock to pay part of the loan so she is under the margin limit. Margin buying means you can lose everything, if you owe half what your shares are worth and the price drops in half you own nothing. If you bought half as much for cash you would be able to withstand the loss and hope it came back.
