Maintenance requirement

Question

I just deposited $600 in my TD Ameritrade account. I bought three stocks for $545. On the box it says $195 maintenance required. Does that mean that I have to deposit an additional $195?

Answer 1

For starters, Ameritrade has a higher margin maintenance requirement (MMR) than Reg T (30% vs 25%).

The amount of MMR per position depends on the price of the stock so you can't look at the total MMR and work backwards and determine the amount the MMR per stock position.

$195 divided by $545 is about 36% so my guess is that at least one of your positions has a share price of less than $4 (higher margin requirement).

In answer to your question, if you have $600 in your account and you buy less than $600 worth of securities, you would not be on margin and would not have to deposit additional cash. The MMR is just a calculation letting you know the minimum equity that you would need to carry the positions.

And as Hart Co mentioned, Reg T minimum account value is $2,000 for margin so I'm going to guess that you have other securities in your account thereby allowing you to meet the $2k requirement. If not, I have no clue how you could buy on margin with $600.

The short answer? Call TD Ameritrade to verify all of this.