Margin loan at 1.55%

I have used it 3 times in the past 2 years, at under 10% value of my long positions. I use it to take short term positions on companies I thought were oversold on bad news.

First company bounced back up and I sold out completely at about 6% profit.
Second company bounced back and I sold enough shares to clear the margin loan and kept a small stake in the company, just under 4% profit.
Third company failed to bounce, I sold at a 3%ish loss.

Because i'm making these bets for a week at longest the interest fees are tiny. On the flipside these are bets and not investments. My emotional response to winning/losing with borrowed money is greater for some reason. I wouldn't recommend it unless you are completely confident in your own self discipline.

I do take long positions, just for a short time frame. Even a low interest rate still cuts into any potential profits/compounds any potential loss.

Jeez............Please, be careful.

Remember, don't risk what you can't afford to lose. This type of leverage can ruin people.....please don't let it be you

Yeah I'm surprised I can get 4x. My initial goal was to be able to buy stock without having to wait for 3 days for the cash to settle after I sold.

But now I'm thinking maybe wait for the market to stabilise and go 50% leverage?

Ok yeah leverage is high risk. Maybe 30% max? Or 15%?

You are borrowing money - paying an interest rate for it.
It is on margin - if the value of the asset you buy declines you will have to post margin for it, and your losses will be multiplied because of the leverage involved.

All for the sake of not having the cash to buy the stock for three days?

Unless this is "play money", and you are really, really disciplined, I would strongly advise against this.

Stock borrowing / lending, borrowing to invest, derivatives etc, they have their place.  But they are definitely not for people who aren't completely confident in their understanding.  And even then experienced traders, at highly sophisticated investment banks, blow the bejeezus out of things with sad regularity.

Let's take IAG for an example:-

You have £100k

You want to buy 1000 IAG shares on Friday the 13th March. The close price was ~£350.
So you borrowed ~£250k.
You're in for a total of ~£350k (100 of which is yours, 250 of which is your broker's, on which you're paying 1.5% interest).
Those 1000 IAG shares are held as collateral by your broker.

On Monday the 16th the close price was £256.
The 1000 IAG shares are now worth £256k. They are not yours. They are held as collateral by your broker.

That's £6k more than you borrowed. Your initial investment is down by £94k.

So you get a margin call, asking you to stump up, give or take, the difference. If you can't meet the margin call then, basically, the asset is no longer yours, and you still owe for the loss of value of the asset. And if you want to keep those IAG shares you are now funding a loss making position.

You've gone from £100k up to basically £0 in three days.

Three days.

Contrast with you buying £100k of IAG shares with no margin / borrowing.
You buy 286 IAG shares for ~£100k on the 13th March.
On the 16th March those shares are worth £73k.
You're down ~£27k, you're not paying interest, the shares are still yours, you face no risk of a margin call.

It has to be acknowledged that the opposite can happen too. But to take a punchy position like this you need to be confident in your knowledge, confident in the stock / index you are trading, and confident that you can ride out (ie pay for) any short term volatility.

I am not an expert equity trader (far from it), and I am sure that the likes of @wallstreet or aj can add colour, detail, and experience.

But I know enough to be very, very wary of trading on margin.

Is a three day delay in purchasing your next whatever worth more than the downside risk + the risk of missing some potential upside?

Think very, very hard about that question.