So an option for me it would be doing swing/position trading with the platform that IB offers until i gain some more money(besides the fact that,i will add up more money from other differents income sources into the account)to be able to purchase the dastrader platform without these monthly $125 affect most of my earning's percentage right?
My only experience with it was that it would not run on my 3-monitor array. (Worked OK, though, when run on a single monitor.)
MotiveWave connects to IB, AMP and Rithmic (as well as many other brokers and data feeds). You can get our Trade Edition for $29/month.
In my humble opinion, that's ways too expensive. That's almost the price tag for a proper Reuters platform and maybe 1/3 of a Bloomberg box. More importantly, you would need to achieve an annualised rate of return in excess of 75% just to cover the fixed costs before commission and tax on PNL. Keep your costs under tight control. Could you trade with the price quotes alone? Have you tried paper trading like that? Or let me ask, do you really need that specific platform to be profitable? If so, what would happen if the platform gets discontinued or a new one comes out you can't stand? I would keep things as simple (and cost effective) as possible and then see whether in your daily trading you will really miss these niceties. If the case is then so compelling, go for it but still $125/month is ridiculously expensive. Just my 2c.
AMP has many trading platforms,out of them, 13 are free. AMP also has lower commissions than IB. https://www.ampfutures.com/platforms/
I would give DAS a miss, until you are both fully capitalized and seeing good consistent returns. Also, are you U.S. based? With a U.S. margin account, if you are day trading stocks, you can only make 3 day trades in any 5 trading day period. At the 4th trade your account will be frozen. It's the law, not the broker's discretion. You can get around this by trading with a cash account, in which case it takes a couple days for some mysterious reason for your funds to "settle", or go with an offshore broker, or trade something other than equities, or wait until you can fund up with $25k or more. If you are trading stocks intraday, then, your trading and potential earnings will be pretty small and since you will be making beginner mistakes/losses, it is unlikely that you will recoup the monthly expense of using DAS instead of the free TWS. If you are going to use IB as your broker, I suggest that you paper trade with TWS for a while and learn the platform, then do your thing with IB. A paid platform like DAS would be money wasted in your pursuit of profit. Money you probably won't be earning for a while. BTW if you are ever considering a switch to a grown up operating system like a Linux distro, DAS will not be usable. TWS or TOS are your only two desktop trading platform choices for Linux. I am using TWS on Ubuntu. We don't have any WinDOHs computers in our home. That is another incentive to go with TWS. I started trading at IB with only $10k so I feel your pain. The PDT is a real PITA and it pressures you into trading on days when you shouldn't trade, the opposite of the stated intended purpose. On that 5th day you just want to trade, to keep your ratio of 1:5 trading days and not let it go to 1:6 or 1:7 or worse. That is of course a most unfortunate thing. Not just any arbitrary day is going to be a good day for trading a small account. And when you have made your three in/outs, you are done for the next 5 days. Bummer. Trading up to $25k from $2k would probably take you about 5 years, give or take 10. However, I think it is important to do some live trading early on, and get a feel for playing with real money. You will NOT, no matter how hard you try, paper trade exactly like you would live trade. And the environment is very very different! It is a big adjustment and if your goal is to trade and make a little money, then you need some time in the real money environment. You most likely WILL lose money. Most beginning traders either fail (lose all their money) or quit. (before they lose ALL their money.) Best you can realistically hope for is to make small losses and gradually decrease their number while hopefully increasing win rate and win average profits, and start growing your account back before it is all gone. If you can turn it around and be profitable after your newbie losses, then when you are able to get properly capitalized you will have a better chance of continued profitability. You will only survive if you use good risk/money management. An essential skill. Without it, you would also lose a $25k or bigger account, it would just take a day or two to be back under the PDT shackles, and then your account would take a little longer to kill than the $2k account. Learn to manage your risk and position size now, and later you can make use of those skills. Don't be afraid to trade a $2k account if you genuinely want to trade. It will teach you things that paper trading can never teach you. OTOH, don't walk blindly into live trading without enough paper trading to LEARN THE PLATFORM, and learn how orders work. While you are doing that, read all your trading books again. And again. No need to buy more books... they will either tell you the same stuff, or else they will push all sorts of wacky ideas that are only there to make that book different from all the rest. But keep reading. Over and over, as you practice on sim trading. You will for practical reasons be pretty much limited to $5 to $10 stocks with such a small account. Maybe $1 to $10. Beware the penny stocks below a buck. They will give you good returns on your small account, usually, but sometimes stuff happens. A sub $1 stock's trading is often halted without warning, and days later you find it active again at 1/4 the pre gap price. On rare occasions it will gap up, but don't count on it. And you can't short sell the little guys, either. So you will want to at least stick to $1 and up, and preferably $5 to $10 stocks. Fully funded traders sometimes ignore stocks in this price tier. Wonder why... but that will be your game, if you come to the table with only $2k. Are you sure you can open your account at IB with $2k? I am not aware of any minimum, actually. And I initially deposited $5k and then the next day, another $5k, and nobody ever said anything. It was still a few days wait for the funds to "settle" LOL. I really don't understand that. It's not like I mailed them a paper check. But that's how they do it. Anyway be sure you can open your account before you start the process, so you don't waste your time. BTW, I am hearing for an offshore broker, CMEG isn't bad, and they do take small accounts, and no PDT rule in effect, either. Something to think about.
It's been years since I day-traded stocks but unless the PDT rule was modified, your take is slightly off. First, a day-trade per PDT is a roundtrip(an entry+an exit) on the same day. Any hold into the next trade-day session negates being a day-trade. In your example, your 3 in/outs and then you are done for the next 5 days means all 3 ins/outs occur on the same day. The PDT rule uses a 5 successive business(aka trading-day) window. It's a rolling window... simply, for example, someone could take one day-trade, one each on Mon, Wed, and Fri, every week, and never trigger PDT. Your choice of brokerage and their implementation of PDT (and even what constitutes one trade) may come into play however. Im not arguing Growley, just pointing out that PDT, while it totally sucks and is just another example of government and it's agencies supporting Mr.Big in the name of protecting Joe Sixpack, there is/are some flexibilit(y/ies). I used to keep my own rolling PDT calendar. I did not use IB however. PDT is PITA for sure!! Trade Futures.