So if $23000 was bought on the margin (approx 25000 shares)...

So if $23000 was bought on the margin (approx 25000 shares) without sounding ignorant,money being borrowed to pay for these, without any multipe leveraging then that, $23000 must surely be the loss at most. Now one must surely not have $178k in capital and be trading on the margin without being aware of the total risk. A loss of any sort is not ideal but only $23k out of $178k is at the end of the day surely not so bad as it could have been and there is plenty of capital left to tade out of a poor result with a handy capital loss to write off against gains come tax time. There are many other investment opps with that amount of capital plus one's income as well as the stock ex. Hells bells there are some very good solid investments (as opposed to high risk trades) to be had that with that amount of cap a single year would see it back.

Just my point of view, having lost some and made some, always best to have capital.