i just bought 192 shares of SSO at 25.97
in the summary at the bottom it shows (2493) as the amount of capital used…
but shouldnt it say (4986.24) ??
We assume you will use available margin for stock purchases over $5 / share. Thus, you only need to lay out 1/2 the cash for your position, but the other 1/2 gets added to your "margin used."
I’ve been confused by this as well and don’t understand the explanation above. In my Etrade account, I have margin access but only use margin when I buy more shares than I have cash to cover (unrelated to a $5/share threshold).
So if I buy 192 shares at $25.07, that’s $4800. This trade would withdraw $4800 from my cash account and not use margin if I had a $10k cash balance.
