In my opinion this *is* dollar cost averaging, because you’re contributing the $150 each month, and you’re buying regularly (maybe not monthly, but multiple times a year in the early stages, depending on your broker’s commission and whatnot). It isn’t a “buy all at once” approach.

However, you used the phrase “dollar cost averaging” in your post, and DON’T think this IS dollar cost averaging.

As I understand it, DCA involves investing a constant amount regularly over time. It has two advantages- it allows you to pay small amounts off your paychque so you don’t notice the loss, and *it reduces volatility, because the price you pay for the investment will be approximately the average cost of the investment over the period you’re making the purchases*. I think that’s where the word “averaging” comes in. In other words, if you buy $12, 000 of a stock today, you take the risk that the stock is high today. If you invest that $12,000 over the course of a year (say $1,000/month), then you will end up getting shares at more or less their average share price over the course of the year. On the other hand, you don’t get the chance to spend the $12,000 on a day when the share is down.

The margin strategy involves buying the shares all at once (if I understand it correctly), in order to reduce fees. It therefore doesn’t have the second Averaging benefit of dollar cost averaging.