PDT killing you? why not futures?

Discussion in 'Trading' started by 0008, Nov 21, 2002.

  1. The SEC has a rule that US residents are NOT allowed to trade foreign options! Unless they've changed it in the last month. Four weeks ago this was listed in the IB website:
    Orders on options and futures are available on a number of European Exchanges. To receive a Request for Quote, highlight an option or futures market data line, right click, and choose quote request. SEC rules prohibit U.S. resident customers from trading non-U.S. security options.

    But now it doesn't seem to be there anymore. :confused:

    The stocks I've looked at on the London Stock Exchange have never been available to short through Interactive Brokers.
     
    #21     Nov 23, 2002
  2. canuck

    canuck

    it's easy to avoid the rules if you have money. For me, the PDT rule doesn't matter as I cover myself, and I also trade futures. But if I had to start trading NOW, that would much harder. Think about when you started, you didn't throw $50k to try it out. I would advise smaller amounts to limit risk. Is there really something so wrong with buying and selling a few hundred shares to get your feet wet???
     
    #22     Nov 23, 2002
  3. These rules limit us to three "daytrades" regardless of their size. I could buy three odd-lots of 10 shares, totalling less than $100 value, if I sell them the day I bought them I can't buy anything else for a week.

    The same is true if you buy three individual options contracts.

    You're punished just as much for the small trade. So, if anything, these rules encourage us to trade bigger.
     
    #23     Nov 23, 2002
  4. nusrat

    nusrat

    First, the point isn't communism; it's paternalism or totalitarianism, of any stripe.

    Secondly, the analogy doesn't hold: the primary purpose of traffic laws is to protect people from others, not from themselves. PDT rules are more analagous to laws against suicide. (And please, don't anyone bother countering with the paper-thin argument that the trader who blows up is a potential financial burden on society.) The logical extension is to prohibit (or make impracticable) all self-endangering or society-burdening activities, from bungee-jumping to overeating to making oneself unemployable by getting a PhD in Comparative Lit.

    PDT rules just had a lower bar to emergence than such other restrictions, due to the prior existence and historical precedents of a particular regulatory infrastructure.
     
    #24     Nov 23, 2002
  5. As for the speed limit analogy, we're ALL subjected to the same speed limits on the same roads. Let the PDT rules be applied to ALL accounts, no matter what size. Then we would certainly not have the opportunity to complain that they are unfair. What we would have, is a lot of the people who are telling us to stop complaining joining us and themselves complaining much louder than we are now.
     
    #25     Nov 23, 2002
  6. What it has to do with communists is that under communism people were not supposed to have capital or access to free-market use of capital. These PDT restrictions have begun limiting, based on account size, the public's right to freely employ their own capital in the markets. Which goes against the democratic notion of freedom to use your own capital, thus leaning toward the communist model.
     
    #26     Nov 23, 2002
  7. nusrat

    nusrat

    Interesting bit of trivia: while driving around Italy, I discovered that the speed limit depends on the vehicle -- i.e., not just on passenger cars vs. trucks, but on the type of passenger car (higher limits for bigger cars).
     
    #27     Nov 23, 2002
  8. qdz

    qdz

    We condemn PDT rules and theirs creators.

    :p
     
    #28     Nov 23, 2002
  9. So are Italian roads safer than American roads as a result?
     
    #29     Nov 23, 2002
  10. qdz

    qdz

    Since injustice appears and injustice turns against injustice, Italian is more safer.

    Hi, what do you mean?

    :p
     
    #30     Nov 23, 2002