You have to wonder why they put these rules in place. I am pretty sure its to help the little people. lol (with just a hint of sarcasim)
LOL Little people at the time where killing it, easy money, then this stopped little people dead and the 4x's Margin on 25K+ was enough to also wipe out the richer people who got greedy. They protect there money well sadly for us!! Had a Yahoo group, about 12 of us, all doing great, if not for this we'd of been millionaires inside of 2 - 3 years I'd of bet
Honestly I am never trade on stocks market but on spot forex market, with choose pair or couple currency to traded, might yes if trade on stocks need more capital, different with forex I can use leverage and my broker offer low minimum deposit
My biggest win WAS my biggest loss. I bought gold all the way up to the peak, and then rode it most of the way back down, giving back most all of my profits. 1. Fell in love with the story 2. Overcome with fundamentals 3. Didn't exercise basic money management 4. Didn't know anything about options and how to protect a position. Ah, happy times. I thought I knew it all.
Take one trade, and you have to be able to predict. Then trading is all about offense. Take 1000 trades, and absent edge, you will have 500 winners, and 500 losers. Then, and only then, does your skill as a trader influence your outcome. Take a lot of trades, close a lot of bad entries, and you have done two things: 1) Manufactured probability in your remaining trades by weeding out the low probability trades; and , 2) Entered the large series type of trading where your good practices will be rewarded. (The larger the number of trades, the more defense is offense and offense is defense, only defense is easier, more reliable, cuts across all sorts of markets, and leads to more profits.) You are fine. Stop doing what everyone else is doing. They are making a lot of money and giving it all back. Trade a large series of trades, make a lot of money like all the other losers, and distinguish yourself by not giving it all back. It's really that simple.
That is the classic story of a gold bug. I don't know a single one that EVER got out near a top, they ALWAYS rode is back down. This was back in the early 80's. Here is a funny video about gold.......
Gold Bugs have this perverse desire to know more than anyone else and be proven right. I was a frigging walking talking encyclopedia. I was to latter learn the hard way, that trading is about making money and holding onto it, not predicting and being proven right. Usually, being quickly proven wrong works much better.