OK - this is really pissing me off. Today I was trading in one of my IB accounts, where my net liquidity is over 25k but my equity with loan (cash balance minus margin requirements) is just under 25k, due to positions I am holding as swing trades. TWS will not let me place any more orders because it considers them potential pattern day trades (which they are) because IB management has recently decided that they are no longer using the net liq figure for the PDT rule, but will now use the equity with loan figure instead. Nice of them to mention this! I just missed out on almost $1/share on VLO this morning because of this bullshit. So now apparently I have to segregate my daytrading activities in a sep account from everything else and tie up a bunch of cash that I want to use for overnighters. Thanks for the heads up, IB. You really fucked me on this one.
Do you have any open option positions? Its been my experience that stock holdings don't reduce your equity with loan value, so its ok to have overnight stocks. The problem comes with options, which are not counted as part of you net liquidity, which I believe is standard procedure for retail brokers.