Jack, appreciated. " the infamous special miscellaneous account" the same as " Special Memorandum Account"? http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=margin&p=overview1
PepperJ: Yes it is. Learned the term last century and am not sure if I mis-remembered or the name has changed over the years. Probably mis-remembered, am getting old. Just to add to your store of knowledge, the Fed used to change the margin rate from time to time. If I recall it has varied between 50% and 80% since I started trading\investing. They haven't changed the rate in many years. A friend says it's because there are so many ways to get money that the rate changes became ineffective as a means to limit\encourage investment. Jack