To add to this - for those of you unfamiliar with

To add to this - for those of you unfamiliar with the concept of "leverage," it's the same as margin money in your brokerage account. It's the use of debt to generate a profit on an investment, with the idea being you can return the loaned money and keep the profits in exchange for a small interest payment. It's the same as purchasing a house: over time, the house price appreciates but you only pay for what you bought it for, with interest. Over time, your home's value will exceed the interest payments and thus you will make a profit when you sell. Brokers like Etrade will actually loan you money at a small interest rate, and you can use that to invest. For stocks such as AAPL, GOOG, FB, MSFT (large-caps) you can borrow up to 2x your money. So if you're very confident about an investment, you can use margin to double your profits.

The risk, of course, is that the investment loses money and you're now sitting at twice the loss. So using borrowed capital has to be done very, very carefully. In your case, LT, preferred stock is an example of a smart use of your friends' and family's money as leverage. There is a lot of security in it. I had a roommate in college who would get a check from his grandparents every year for tuition (around $45K) and instead of paying it, he would take out a loan and invest the check, which let him pay his college tuition later while keeping a sizable profit.

For now, leverage seems to be a very profitable strategy. I mean heck, my freakin 401k mutual fund with its small expense ratio made a 19.2% return last year. It's a bull market like none other.