Finally saved up my cash, and I am now free from the PDT rule. I have been swing trading for 3 years, and had +100% return last year (I am lucky). Now I will be trading counter-trend, looking for reversals. Naturally there will be many small wins / a few big losses, everything under control of course . This is my preferred type of strategy (I tend to be a psychopath in trading and in life, although it bums me out so I guess I am not too bad off). I am no good so far .... I find that daytrading is NOT swing trading: 3/29 -10 3/30 +550 3/31 -650 4/3 +89 4/4 -290 4/5 +240 4/6 -350
I am $458 above the 25k threshold. Below that, it is game over for a while. The plan for Friday and next week is a small position size, fixed $2000 per position, so that the 25k limit need not be a consideration in my strategy. This may be a short journal.
Today, -25 on 1700 shares. Not a lot of reversal opportunities on a strongly trending day, so I don't mind being close to breakeven.
-260 on 2500 shares. My strategy isn't working well. Actually it was quite spectacular to lose that much, trading so lightly. Unless I can get something going tommorow, this is the end of things for a while. I was able to improve my executions today. I found that with NVAX, a hyperactive stock with a penny spread, a market order works best .... the relative order with 0.01 offset almost always slipped a penny. So I lost $190 in NVAX with great precision. Also I discovered that trading less than 100 shares, you will have slow executions about half the time.
As you have found out, trading anything less than 100 shrs will result in horrible executions. If I don't have enough confidence in a trade to take a full position, then the trade is not worth doing. Good luck with the journal.
I retrospect, I think my 2 months backtesting was inadequate. I avoided curve fitting, commisions and slippage were in line, but it seems my strategy suffered as overall market conditions changed. I ran the numbers - the backtesting period had 92% win rate, forward testing (paper trading) had 88% win rate, and going live 42% (average winner half as big as average loser). Since then, it is mostly churning. Meanwhile I have recovered about half my losses swing trading. Yesterday and today I am scaling into short QQQQ and long GLD. Also I am long AMTD over earnings, and will continue to hold for about a month. I am stalking a good long entry in DGX, to hold for a month or so.
AMTD is not working out, I am holding for a while longer. My larger positions - short QQQQ and long GLD are working. Actually just covered QQQQ for +1.85% Reversed to long QQQQ @ 41.94
Closed QQQQ for -0.3%, now short @ 41.89 This is an index swing trading strategy I am working on. If it works out, I can leverage it by trading futures or options.