How Margin Debt Works

Margin debt is a sometimes-overlooked but key part of the stock market that is particularly pertinent right now.

It is the money that investors borrow from stockbrokers to buy securities when they can’t or don’t want to fund the entire purchase with cash. Say an investor wants to purchase 100 shares at $50 each for a total of $5,000 but has only $2,500 to invest. That individual could buy the rest of the shares on margin. The same process can be used to buy exchange-traded funds.

Investors frequently use margin to get more bang for their investing buck. “The pro of margin is that it increases your purchasing power,” says Jeff Deiss, director of wealth planning at ACM in Ridgewood, N.J.

The downside is that brokers typically charge interest on borrowed money. And if the individual starts losing money on the investment, the stockbroker might ask for additional cash as security or collateral. That decision and how much cash will be required will depend on a variety of factors, including the remaining value of the investment, how much money the investor owes the broker and the requirements of the broker.

“Buying on margin comes with a lot of risk, and if you are going to use margin, it is probably a good idea to have some cash on the side,” says Mr. Deiss. Investors who don’t have the required additional cash may be forced to close out their positions at a loss.

A large amount of buying on margin also can be detrimental to the stock market as a whole.

Margin Debt

At the end of January, customer margin debt at U.S. brokers regulated by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, jumped to $799 billion from $562 billion a year earlier, according to data provided by Finra.

Some analysts say that jump in margin debt came from individual investors, who turned to online trading amid pandemic-related lockdowns. A combination of new easy-to-use trading technology, ultralow borrowing costs and stimulus checks from the federal government helped fuel the phenomenon.

“For younger folks, it’s kind of the drug of choice,” Mr. Deiss says.

The problem is, when there is a lot of margin debt concentrated in a few stocks, those stocks tend to see wild price swings, says Fabiana Fedeli, global head of fundamental equities at Rotterdam-based asset-management company Robeco. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the recent increase in margin debt coincided with higher participation levels by individual investors, she says.

Indeed, certain stocks that became popular with individual investors also saw price volatility earlier this year. “The minute that the margin couldn’t be met, some of the positions had to be sold immediately,” Ms. Fedeli says. “It gives volatility to the market,” she says.

As the war against Hamas dragged into 2024, there were worries here that investment would dry up in Israel’s globally important technology sector, as much of the world became angry against the casualties in Gaza and recoiled at the unstable security situation.

In fact, a new survey found investment into Israeli technology startups grew 28% last year to $10.6 billion. The influx buoyed Israel’s economy and helped it maintain a war footing on several battlefronts.

The increase marks a turnaround for Israeli startups, which had experienced a decline in investments in 2023 to $8.3 billion, a drop blamed in part on an effort to overhaul the country’s judicial system and the initial shock of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack.

Tech investment in Israel remains depressed from years past. It is still just a third of the almost $30 billion in private investments raised in 2021, a peak after which Israel followed the U.S. into a funding market downturn.

Any increase in Israeli technology investment defied expectations though. The sector is responsible for 20% of Israel’s gross domestic product and about 10% of employment. It contributed directly to 2.2% of GDP growth in the first three quarters of the year, according to Startup Nation Central—without which Israel would have been on a negative growth trend, it said.

“If you asked me a year before if I expected those numbers, I wouldn’t have,” said Avi Hasson, head of Startup Nation Central, the Tel Aviv-based nonprofit that tracks tech investments and released the investment survey.

Israel’s tech sector is among the world’s largest technology hubs, especially for startups. It has remained one of the most stable parts of the Israeli economy during the 15-month long war, which has taxed the economy and slashed expectations for growth to a mere 0.5% in 2024.

Industry investors and analysts say the war stifled what could have been even stronger growth. The survey didn’t break out how much of 2024’s investment came from foreign sources and local funders.

“We have an extremely innovative and dynamic high tech sector which is still holding on,” said Karnit Flug, a former governor of the Bank of Israel and now a senior fellow at the Jerusalem-based Israel Democracy Institute, a think tank. “It has recovered somewhat since the start of the war, but not as much as one would hope.”

At the war’s outset, tens of thousands of Israel’s nearly 400,000 tech employees were called into reserve service and companies scrambled to realign operations as rockets from Gaza and Lebanon pounded the country. Even as operations normalized, foreign airlines overwhelmingly cut service to Israel, spooking investors and making it harder for Israelis to reach their customers abroad.

An explosion in negative global sentiment toward Israel introduced a new form of risk in doing business with Israeli companies. Global ratings firms lowered Israel’s credit rating over uncertainty caused by the war.

Israel’s government flooded money into the economy to stabilize it shortly after war broke out in October 2023. That expansionary fiscal policy, economists say, stemmed what was an initial economic contraction in the war’s first quarter and helped Israel regain its footing, but is now resulting in expected tax increases to foot the bill.

The 2024 boost was led by investments into Israeli cybersecurity companies, which captured about 40% of all private capital raised, despite representing only 7% of Israeli tech companies. Many of Israel’s tech workers have served in advanced military-technology units, where they can gain experience building products. Israeli tech products are sometimes tested on the battlefield. These factors have led to its cybersecurity companies being dominant in the global market, industry experts said.

The number of Israeli defense-tech companies active throughout 2024 doubled, although they contributed to a much smaller percentage of the overall growth in investments. This included some startups which pivoted to the area amid a surge in global demand spurred by the war in Ukraine and at home in Israel. Funding raised by Israeli defense-tech companies grew to $165 million in 2024, from $19 million the previous year.

“The fact that things are literally battlefield proven, and both the understanding of the customer as well as the ability to put it into use and to accelerate the progress of those technologies, is something that is unique to Israel,” said Hasson.

How Margin Debt Works

Money that is borrowed to buy stocks is sometimes an indicator of future market performance. Here is how it works and why the matter is relevant now.

The 28% increase buoyed the country as it battled on several fronts but investment remains down from 2021