Speaking of which, I noticed that the big market reversal during the beginning of the Iran war happened right around when ESLR requirements were due to relax. Is this a transmission mechanism for that? Did some of the big brokerages run a big promotion (0% APR on margin debt!) or something?

IAmGraydon 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That chart (and many from FRED) is unfortunately not useful without viewing it on a logarithmic scale. Things can look quite parabolic in a linear space, but exponential growth is quite normal in many financial contexts.

Click "edit graph" and change units to "natural log". Now look again. You'll see that the growth in margin loans is absolutely normal, and actually has only recently recovered from the dip caused by the 2008 financial crisis.

	▲	w10-1 13 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> change units to "natural log" Great tip, but I didn't see "natural log" specifically. Perhaps "Compounded rate of change" is most applicable? That's still mostly above 0 historically, indicating margin usage is ever-increasing. The helpful graph would be margin usage as a weighted percentage of market participation.

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glitchc 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

$600+ billion doesn't seem like much. I was expecting more tbh.