It greatly reduces the risk for investors who borrow short term to make leveraged bets on stocks and bonds.

What's more, mutual fund companies are effectively leveraged bets on the markets.

When rates started to rise, a lot of managers with leveraged bets on lower rates had to sell, and sell fast.

If you're an idiotic borrower who inflated the housing bubble with a small deposit mortgage, you made a leveraged bet on the market.

The biggest investing story of the year was the disasters stemming from leveraged bets - some using derivatives - on lower interest rates.

When its highly leveraged bets in the Government securities markets went sour, the county's investment fund found itself $1.7 billion in the hole.

Investors who see things his way can buy yen bank deposits, or futures and options contracts that provide a leveraged bet on the currency.

Ameritrade is making "a leveraged bet on trading marginally improving," he added.

More important, these are highly leveraged bets on gold prices, rising or falling several times as quickly as the price of the metal.

When those leveraged bets backfired this year, the funds substantially reduced their borrowing and, thus, their trading.