[Erasmus]

If you or I were buying commodities contracts or such, we could get a 10:1 ratio, as long as our position was profitable. As soon as the position turned on us, we’d either have to put up more money to cover the shortfall, or our broker would try to call us *once* — and if he couldn’t get in touch with us, he’d sell out our position until our account met margin requirements.

To quote Howard Ruff (Ruffly): "The margin call. The only unqualified piece of advice you will ever receive from your broker."

[NVDave]

That is very, very true.

No less a legendary investor than Jesse Livermore thought the same thing — that the margin call was his stop-loss. Livermore was trading/flipping stocks back in the day when you could get 10:1 margin on stocks, so as soon as you were down 10%, the broke would make a margin call.

Most all traders follow a firm rule: never meet a margin call. Let them sell you out. Meeting a call is essentially doubling up on a loss.