I’ve obtained my leverage mostly through credit card stoozing, the act of taking advantage of low and 0% promotional credit card balance transfers and rolling the balances over as necessary. As I said at the talk and every time I bring this up, I do NOT recommend this unless you, like me, have an Asperger’s level attention to financial minutiae. This is also a strategy that only is worthwhile while your net worth is relatively low. I started doing it in college and am now winding the strategy down, to be replaced with portfolio margin, which is cheaper and more scalable for people with more substantial assets to work with. You are right though that margin calls are a risk, however, so active portfolio monitoring and careful use of mean-variance optimization and other risk management techniques is essential. If you do not have the time or skills to employ these, or to use a financial advisor who is, then I cannot recommend it.
I’ve obtained my leverage mostly through credit card stoozing, the act of taking advantage of low and 0% promotional credit card balance transfers and rolling the balances over as necessary. As I said at the talk and every time I bring this up, I do NOT recommend this unless you, like me, have an Asperger’s level attention to financial minutiae. This is also a strategy that only is worthwhile while your net worth is relatively low. I started doing it in college and am now winding the strategy down, to be replaced with portfolio margin, which is cheaper and more scalable for people with more substantial assets to work with. You are right though that margin calls are a risk, however, so active portfolio monitoring and careful use of mean-variance optimization and other risk management techniques is essential. If you do not have the time or skills to employ these, or to use a financial advisor who is, then I cannot recommend it.