I agree - it's not a good business model to give someone you don't know 10x their capital and hope they don't lose more than 10%. However, while the opportunity is there I'm going to use it as it's the cheapest line of credit known to man. I'm confident in my abilities and I'm only trading relatively financially-secure stocks, so in my case I wouldn't have any worries. However some of the people I probably wouldn't do so with.
You are 100% correct...and just like the sub prime mess...as long as they are going to allow you to borrow 500k with no money down, by all means take it!!....the best part is you really don;t have to pay interst on this leverage either!!! which is another flawed model....If your letting somebody with 10k trade with 100k-500k, you should at least charge them 8,9 10% interest per day!...most firms do not charge unless you keep overnights