I find it incredible that my vodka tastes so good! It must be the fresh lime! What did I want to talk about...oh yeah margin.

What I find most incredible is...I can still type..clearly a motor reflex not controlled by the brain...woops, let's try that again.

What I find most incredible is that a guy who invests in real estate is taking issue with with margin.

Margin is mortgage. Margin is a LOC. Margin is debt. Margin is leverage. How can someone who invests in real estate and presumably has a mortgage think that margin is bad? The conventional wisdom is margin is bad, that in itself makes me think that margin must be good.

I was bought up in a money hating family. When I started meeting "rich" people I asked them for tips on wealth. Almost everyone said something to the effect of OPM. OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY.

So the secret to wealth is OPM, but margin is bad. Huh? Colour me confused.

My house and yours was bought using debt. Companies use debt with gay abandon. Countries, states...Debt debt debt, wherever you look. Yet somehow the conventional wisdom is that margin debt is bad.

There is one problem with margin so lets isolate that. Margin can force your hand. It can make you sell low. So the problem is not margin, the problem is being forced to sell when you don't want to. Remove that problem and you may uncover one of the best wealth creation tools of all time. Margin is leverage and the judicious use of leverage is a wonderful thing.

Now is not the time to be playing safe. Now is the time to be getting ready to cream the market using leverage, high betas, small caps, long LEAP calls, you name it. I don't mean right now, though it's certainly looking attractive to me, and certainly not all at once, but this is the year to be play with fire.

Play safe when the markets are high. Use non-callable leverage when the markets are low.

Cheers
Dean