This is what the SEC calls protecting the customer. In my opinion thats what caused the Direct Access Stock Trading to take a huge nose dive off a cliff. They stopped the small accounts from Day Trading.
Sampson, You have always sounded very knowledgeable on this forum, I would have assumed that you had way more than 24k(maybe you do in other accounts I don't know-I am being complementary). Volume has picked up on ES options in the last year so you may want to consider trading futures options until you get back over 25K(PDT does not apply to futures). I will not trade SEC regulated options because you can't have open orders on both sides of the market and the trading day is limited to 9:30-4:15. I find the overnight futures market to be quite profitable.
24k.....your there. Why don't you just move a few extra thousand from your other accounts? Once you bring the account to 25k all is good. Erik
Whoever you talked to is an idiot. I've had the PDT flag removed from my account. But this was back when I was with etrade. They said you can have it removed once if it was a mistake and you tell them it won't happen again. You can still trade options and futures, i f the rep you talked to said you can't trade anything then have him fired. IB is the best broker out there, but the customer service makes me wonder.
Thanks for all the advise folks! Moving funds is not really the issue I can easily do that or move the entire account to Options Xpress. I was just curious to the stupidity of this rule because I have never encountered it before today.
Your info is old, chewbaca. Options were not originally considered governed by PDT, but this changed after just a few months. They are, indeed, covered by the PDT rules.
Samson77, You should be able to change back your PDT account back to a non-PDT one if your trading a pattern has changed for the account (e.g., basically less than 4 round trip trades in 5 days). You need to let you broker know that your trading pattern has changed for the account. IB representative told me you can do it at IB once in 185 days. Ameritrade, Cybertrader, etc. will also let you do it. Please note that after changing back to a regular account, if you still keep doing excessive day trades, your account will be flagged back as PDT. So it's your choice if you just want to borrow 1k form somewhere and still have unlimited day-trade privileges, or change the account from PDT to non-PDT but lose the unlimited day trade privileges. Of course, if your broker (or the customer service representative) harasses you, you can always transfer your money to another broker.