Word of caution for rookie margin playersBased on my long experience in the market, I like to draw the attention to those who work with margin. When for instance you move from a 50% margin to a 70% margin, ie a stock breaks out and the brokerage firm gives you higher margin and hence more leverage, we tend to rush and load up stock only to discover that in a down day the 70% margin is lost and we are forced to sell and go back to the old margin of say the 50%, This change of margin is being noticed by various market parasites who live off the fat of the stock market, day traders, shorts, market makers and so on. To give you an example: CRH had a margin by Scotia ITRADE of 50%.As soon as the SP went over $5 the bank automatically gives us 70% margin and a lot of leverage; We are then tempted to load up on the new margin only to discover that the shorts are shorting the stock below the bank's threshold of $5 thus forcing us to sell in order not to lose money and next day to get a margin call from the bank. And the way market makers and shorts are doing it is by setting the bid one or two points bellow the $5 mark and make sure the sp closes bellow $5.That said, if someone wants to bid up the stock and close above or at the threshold price, these guys will make sure that the last trade is going to be below the mark so people can lose their margins and start selling the last minute or the next day. And so that is what happened today. The stock was going to lose the margin at the close; but at 4;59pm and before the market closed i placed an order to buy 10000k and by the time the order was filled, they could not sell and depress the price which would lower the CRH margin by the bank back down to 50% thus forcing everybody to lose the higher marging and start selling. So we preserved the stock's high margin and tomorrow is another day. So be carefull out there; many sharks are waiting to eat you for breakfast.