  We discuss the feasibility of detecting magnetic transitions with focused
electron vortex probes, suggested by selection rules for the magnetic quantum
number. We theoretically estimate the dichroic signal strength in the L$_{2,3}$
edge of the ferromagnetic d metals. It is shown that under realistic
conditions, the dichroic signal is undetectable for nanoparticles larger than
~1 nm. This is confirmed by a key experiment with nanometer sized vortices.
