How much can you borrow against shares?

How much you can borrow against listed shares is governed by the loan-to-value ratio (LTV): the percentage of the pledged shares’ market value that a lender advances as cash. On an institutional stock loan there is no single figure and no published rate card — the LTV is calibrated to the specific position. As a broad, illustrative guide, institutional stock loans typically fall within a band of roughly 20% to 65% of the position’s value, with deep, liquid, low-volatility holdings toward the upper end and thin, concentrated, or volatile positions toward the lower end.

The LTV on a specific position is not arbitrary; it is the output of a small set of drivers, each of which changes how much of the position a lender can safely advance against. They are set out in full in Loan-to-Value Calibration.

• i
  Liquidity and free float. The deeper the free float and the higher the daily trading volume, the more comfortably a lender could sell the collateral if it had to — which supports a higher LTV. A thin, tightly-held register pulls it down.
• ii
  Volatility. A more volatile underlying can fall further and faster, so the lender holds a larger cushion and the LTV is lower. A stable, mature underlying supports a higher one.
• iii
  Position size versus its market. A pledge that would take months of trading volume to liquidate is haircut more heavily than one that clears in days.
• iv
  Concentration. A position that is a large percentage of the issuer’s free float is harder to exit without moving the price, which lowers the LTV.
• v
  Recourse profile. Full recourse preserves the higher end of the range; a non-recourse structure, which shifts the tail risk to the lender, sits lower in exchange for that protection.

The cost side of these same variables — how they move the pricing rather than the amount — is set out in Lombard loan interest rates and costs.

There is no published LTV for institutional stock loans because a single figure would be misleading. The real number depends on variables no general guide can see: the specific issuer, the exact position, prevailing institutional credit conditions, custody arrangements, currency, and tenor. A range communicates the indicative territory honestly; a precise figure would imply a quote that does not exist. An actual indicative LTV is calibrated to the position at the indicative-terms stage, typically within one to two business days of an enquiry. For how the listing market does and does not change the picture, see Typical LTV: Nasdaq vs HKEX.