For this option to work I wouldwant prices cheaper than they are...

For this option to work I wouldwant prices cheaper than they are currently to offset the risk of going backinto debt and potentially having an unhappy wife if things didn’t work out aswell as expected. This is not an option I would take lightly, though it ismore palatable than a margin loan. Margin loans seem very dangerous to me because as the market falls youcould become a forced seller.

As some people have said here, the use of margin loans is a noxious form of investing

While I personally no longer have the philosophical appetite for it, using someone else's money to invest might make sense at various stages in the equity market cycle when valuations are sufficiently compressed, such as during the GFC, where drawing down on a mortgage facility and investing in a basket of highly durable companies with highly bankable dividend streams might have made sense.

Because back then some of Australia's top companies were trading at sustainable dividend yields that were several hundred basis points higher than mortgage rates (even those that could be fixed for 3 or 5 years), so investors would borrowed against their homes to buy stocks were free carried, with a reasonably meaningful safety margin.

But, despite, the sell-off in the market in the latter parts of this year, I don't believe we are at anywhere near the sorts of valuation levels which makes sense to borrow-to-invest.

Unlike the GFC, when stocks were fundamentally very cheap, currently they are simply fairly valued (and even still modestly over-valued possibly. having come very very over-valued levels), I think.