here is one of my major trading issues: i use firstrade and zecco for trading stocks. now when you buy a stock and sell like 1 hour later you can use that same money for another trade later in the day. not for 3 days actually. i'm not sure why this is since im using my money to buy it. i dont have margin. are there any brokers that will let me do multiple trades in a day. low commissions is a plus. thanks for the recommendations.
You need a margin account to get around this problem. You are asking your broker to loan you money for 3 days and they will only do that in a margin account. You don't need a margin account to do multiple trades in a day but you do need to have the cash in your account to back up your trades in anything other than a margin account. Equity trades take 3-days to settle. You will also need a margin account if you want to sell short. Bottom line, get a margin account and make sure you maintain 25K liquidation value in it if you want to trade equities intraday. Otherwise, even in a margin account i think you are limited to something like 5 day trades per week. Check the rules out with your broker.
darn, i was hoping that wouldn't be the case for every broker. well i guess then i have to find a way to make due with what i've got. i dont want to sign up for margin since i cant pay interest. i get around the lack of short selling since i mainly trade etf's so if i want to be short there is a stock i can buy that handles that. anyway thanks for the help.
there is not much of interest, if you buy and sell 1 hour later..in fact there is probably no interest at all to pay..it is typical for me to use all buying power on my margin account,where all positions are closed EOD and at the end off the month there is few pennies of interest... probably from some leftover overnight positions..
Strictly daytrade margin account here. Any interest i have paid on using margin has been more than compensated by interest paid me on overnight cash positions. Interest paid has been very very little.