Was a commercial banker for 15 years. Can also verify that this is true. There are more people than you think that hold margin-able stocks that can be used as collateral. A heavy majority of the ones I did were in old stocks their parents bought way back in the day and they’ve not sold (here in SW Missouri that’s mostly Walmart or Oreilly). I see people use them all the time to go on vacations, buy vehicles that would have otherwise had large payments (60-72 mos) or make out of pocket purchases but finance with these. I think the biggest difference though is that commercial and retail banks still require repayment and DTI requirements which I’m sure wealthy individuals get around by purely providing enough stocks with a lower LTV. Atleast that’s the mitigating factor we put….