If you just transfer back the cash ?
When balance > 0 you are ok I guess…
And does one see the interest rate, the point when they would margin call etc.?
Interest rate: I don’t remember the frequency of invoicing. I think you have to run the report to see it. I only went on margin with minor amounts (10-15 k) so I did not bother to check.
Also for the margin I think you have to keep it under control in the dashboard.
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Your loan is basically your negative balance + the interest accrual for the month. You send money, or you sell assets or you get dividends to pay it.
They bill the interest for the month on the ~4th of the next month. You can see how much it is when looking at the interest acrual in the report.
You can see the margin requirement on the top of the page on the web version. It is the total requirement. If you already have a margin account, you can already see it. If you want to see the requirement per asset, you can run the margin report (in other reports), but that would be for the day before. You get notification when they increase margin requirement. Usually if you can borrow 75% (in the maintenance margin requirement), they will tell you that in 1 opened day it will be 50%, in 3 openend days it will be 25% and in 5 openend days it will be 0%.
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Huh? Does that mean there’s some short term payback expectation? My Margin Req. Right now says 32k which is roughly 15% of the portfolio value. The withdrawal area says I could take out ~192k on margin with a portfolio value of ~250k. I plan to take out ~60k which will be repayed within 12 months or less. Any caveats I’m missing?
The debt is callable. If they suddenly don’t like your assets anymore, they politely ask for their money back. They are so kind that they give you a few days. If you have ETF’s or blue chips, the probability is low. The risk of such events is more probable with “small” caps.
The portfolio is 75% in VT so I guess that risk is also low…
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I think if you remain within 1/3 of your assets you should be quite safe (if VT as a collateral drops so much within the next 12 months we’all be in big troubles…
)
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What kind of margin model do you use? Reg T or portfolio margin? What percentage of your portfolio value is your purchasing power?
If you start working with margin, you might be considered a professional trader by the tax office. Trading with margin is one point on their checklist. Worst case: you might get taxed on capital gains.
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Is there any benefit to separate the margin loan into an other account?
- I thought about moving my blue chip ETFs to a sub-account , and do use them as collateral for the the margin loan.
- If I near the margin call, I’ll move my other stock there
I’m on IB. I want to buy stocks, right now! I don’t have time to wait for my money to transfer to IB. Can I buy stocks for x amount of $ now and simultanously transfer money to my account to cover the loan instantly without accruing interest? Sort of like using a credit card and paying it full ASAP.
I don’t like using loans for anything, but sometimes you’re itching to buy some stock 
I simply can’t find the information yet, so I thought I’d ask. Maybe I’m just too stupid to understand it.
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Your money is on IB within 2-4 hours.
Always seemed to take longer. I’ll try now and see how long it takes. Thank you!
Honstely, I’m not in a situation where I need the margin loan now, I was just wondering in case I’ll ever need it.
If you borrow less than 10% of your portfolio value, you can. Should you is a completely different question, and I hope you know what you are doing.
Interest for few days won’t be much anyway.
Thank you! I’m honestly just starting to look into it, because there’ve been days recently where I wanted to buy but dind’t have any cash in my account. At worst, I’d do it like that where I buy on margin and transfer the cash back ASAP. I understand that I’d still be able to lose money that way.
I might just transfer more money to IB than I want to buy next time since there seems to be no negative interest rate up to 50000 CHF.
I’d be wary, patience is a key virtue in stocks investing. If an opportunity really requires you to act “right now”, chances are the move hasn’t been sufficiently prepared/studied and its returns rely on luck rather than proper planning. It may work a few times but on the long run, this attitude is more likely to lead to losses in my opinion.
Edit: the main risk I’m seing here is to use money actually needed on the short term for impulse buying, then loosing on fees and potential market downturns when it turns out you need to take it back sooner than expected. It may not be your situation so, as always, apply your own judgement.
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Which stocks are so urgent that they need to be bought right now and can’t wait a day or two? 
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Has anyone actually tried this and can share their experience?
Still is something I don’t understand: does funding your account (let’s say dca-ing monthly) automatically repay the principal (i.e. go against your negative cash balance)? Or can you keep the two lines separate?
I did that this year to pay for an apartment downpayment.
You just have a negative cash balance, that’s not a different entry in your account. If you send back cash in the same currency, it just adds to your balance.
Exactly. You have a negative chf Position, when you pay the negative position diminish by that amount.
The only way to keep it separate is to convert the debt in another currency, by selling USD (for example/ and buy enough chf to compensate the debt. But I’m not sure why you would want to do that.