options brokers with no PDT day-trading restrictions

Which options brokers don't consider NASD's Pattern Day Trading rules to be applicable to equities options?

 

It's not so much the broker it's the clearing firm...If it was up to the individual B/D, it would be no problem but if the clering firms start shutting down accounts there's nothing the b/d can do.
if you private e-mail me I'll give you the name of some firms that i have "heard" aren't enforcing PDT but I'd rather not say publicly what i don't know for sure.

 

The PDT only applies to stocks. You can trade derivatives as much as you want.

 

Wouldn't that be wonderful -- then I wouldn't have had that IB screen flash up on TWS saying that I couldn't exit my MSFT option because it would have been a potential daytrade.

 

You should always be able to exit any position with TWS because it will never allow you to initiate the potentially rule violating 4th trade.

You would have been allowed to exit the 4th trade in any case except that now the account would have been under the PDT rules. PDT doesn't prevent you from exiting any trade.

If this actually happened to you, it is a bug and you should contact customer service.

 

OK, now I'd like to try to coax this thread back on-track.

Yes, most of us believe PDT doesn't apply to equities options.
Yes, even more of us feel that it shouldn't apply.

But all of us now know of at least one broker which is applying the PDT rules to equities options.

So, what I'm asking is:
since this is the Options Forum, and presumably frequented by options traders,
which brokers do you use (or know with certainty) where options are being traded without PDT restrictions?

 

I know that penson enforces PDT on options which is silly becasue even though you can fully pay for 1 call option, more than 3 trades a weeek will lock your account.

 

That's what I thought, too. It is a logic error -- in my head!

I was given one daytrade back, so I opened up 3 option contracts on MSFT. These were all different prices (2 short and 1 long). I still have 1 daytrade left, because I didn't close any of them.

I then noticed that C was done going down for the day, so I bought an option on it and sold it for a profit. I then looked at my MSFT LONG put and noticed that it had moved nicely. So I decided to try and close it.

Well, this is the problem with TWS / IB. Apparently, one could open up all the positions he or she wanted to -- but as soon as you close 1 position (or 3 if you have all your PDT daytrades remaining), TWS doesn't give a rat's ass that you have open positions. Good luck trying to close any of them.

So, in essense, you have to really keep track of things. If you open a position that is volatile and you can't close it, you're screwed.

 

I think IB's TWS system is really screwed up -- because today the Profit/Loss section was showing that I had a profit of $500 on NQ -- which was NOT the case.