say i make the first trade on a monday, the second on a tuesday and the third on a Wednesday; three trading days. On the next monday does the counter zero ie, can i make another 3 day trades or should I only make one trade meaning that the Monday trade which is the first is the only trade which is reset?
I used to daytrade in a small IB account and was always monitoring how many daytrades I had made. If I recall, it works like this: It is a rolling 5 day period; sort of like how a moving average works (it's not averaging, though. just counting trades). So like you said, a trade Monday, a trade Tuesday, and a trade Wednesday. That is three trades in three days. On Thursday or Friday, you cannot trade or it will be 4 trades within 5 days. Now here is where the rolling period starts. On the next Monday (or whatever the 6th day is after your first trade. In this example, we started on a Monday), The 5 day period runs from the last Tuesday until the current day (Monday). That means there was a trade on Tue and a trade on Wed. Two trades in the last 5 days, so on the 6th day, you can trade one more time. I hope that makes sense. Then on Tuesday, the five day period would run from the 1st Wed until the current Tue. There was a trade on Wed and Mon, so you could trade once this Tuesday. On Wed, one trade, Thur no trades, and so on. I can go on and on, but here is it simplified. You can have a max of 3 trades in the LAST 5 days. Every new day, drop off the day from six days ago and count up your totals from the current day and the last four days. IB did a good job of doing it for you and letting you know how many trades you had left.
read through it, go to the examples tab as well... IB provides the simplest explanation of how to deal with PDT IMO...