Tad, If I went back to swing trading, my stops would have to be at least 25c - take 4 losing trades in a row and there goes 5% of my account, that is, if I'm lucky not to have any huge gaps against me. Do you swing trade?
It's easier to upgrade your account through the website, and takes not very many minutes. The upgrade should be approved in about one day (except if you do it on friday, saturday, or sunday). It will be refreshing not to have to wait three days for your money. You'll just need to learn to deal with the daytrading limit. You have several more options now that you can have a margin account. For instance, you could trade Single Stock Futures. Single Stock Futures give you 5:1 margin too, so if you're prepared to take the risk you could actually trade $10,000 worth of stock with $2,000 in your account, and there's no daytrade restriction on them. Worth looking into IB's explanations of Options and Single Stock Futures characteristics if you have some spare time over the weekend. Here's a list of stocks that have Single Stock Futures if you're interested: SSF List
JNPR BOT 100 $9.35 TGT $9.48 below resistance at $9.50 SLD 100 $9.27 stopped out. P&L=-$10 Entry after pullback off high; ntwk strongest industry. Should've known better - mkt gapped up and tendency is to fill the gap. Even after a 5-day decline in the mkt. Also broke rules - stochs were above 80. On a different note, I got some good news today - I got a better job, with higher pay and only 4 days/week. This after I was laid off before Christmas as the company I worked for was downsizing because their financing didn't go through. They gave me severance till the end of Feb, so I'll end up with double pay for Feb. Yeee-haaw. I whipsawed the bastards.
PMCS BOT 100 5.74 TGT 5.90 (50% gap retracement) STP 5.59 SLD 100 5.62 stopped out P&L=-$14 Gapped down (cautious outlook and one-time restructuring change). Entry on 2nd candle up with mkt. But downtrend was relentless. All in all, a down week. Weekly P&L=-$19 Need to read market signals better, and stop going against the trend. Have a great weekend.
CIEN BOT 100 6.09 TGT 6.19 SLD 100 6.19 P&L=$8 Stock gapped down with mkt. Bot on 2nd candle up w/supporting mkt. Sold at tgt.
I applied for upgrade to futures and single stock futures through the IB web site and ... it got approved! My first application was stuck there for 6 months, and this one went through since Fri. What exchange do you trade your SSFs on? Will start looking at Eminis. Does the rule of 3 day trades/week apply to Eminis too?
My account is now margin, but it wouldn't let me trade. Every time I tried to open a position, I got and error message - "potential patterned day trade". The account window says 0 day trades left. Hopefully it'll reset tomorrow. Does anyone using IB know what "Securities GPV" in the account window stands for?