Say you just started working, have no use for your money and are willing to bet 20k on index funds vs a 90% market drop, you should be able to take 2k in leverage and set up your position be auto closed.
But of course as you have more money this type of market exposure starts shifting as you have shorter timer horizons to rebuild and are instead going into more of a wealth conservation mode.
Margin stock accounts also exist, although I don't know enough to know what situations it makes sense to use them in.
Passive income just means other people are working for your income. At some point, someone has to be poor enough to have to do the actual labor. You can abstract this away with as many financial constructs as you want but it boils down to that. If you can "make money" from mere ownership, we can't all own things that make us money because then we wouldn't have to pay anyone and nobody would have to pay us.
Not saying it can't work. It can. But it's a business and a job/sidehustle not magic free money.
Which rather misses the point that many people using these tools don’t have financial security, and don’t have the option to invest like that.
Saying that mortgages can be used to buy investment properties doesn’t change the fact that most people use them to provide basic physical security. I.e. a literal roof over their head, that they can’t be taken away with little notice by their landlord for reasons completely beyond their control.
I’ve you’ve never grown up in an environment where the roof over your head isn’t a certainty, and indeed having a different roof over your head every few years is a certainty. Then it can be rather hard to understand why not everyone considers property just an investment opportunity.
Yeah. Before I bought my home four years ago, three of the last four landlords I'd had had promised long term stability, only to non-renew the lease after the first year (for "other" reasons: "Wife thought she'd like the country, we're moving back to the city", "We want a smaller mortgage payment on our primary home", We're going to renovate and sell"). It's a lot of fun moving a family every year. Especially when around here you also have to come up with first, last, security and other fees and can easily be looking at $10K+ just to move.