If you look at the level 2 on POT, you can see that there is a lot of potential for slippage, so its not suprising he encounters it when trading. It's even more true on the TSE: POT. The spreads on that are a few cents usually like 3 to 5 cents. The only expensive "stock" (ie more then 75) i've found to date that is very scalable thus allowing you to increase your size to a few thousand shares and rarely encountering slippage or more then 1 cent spread is SPY. Ideally i'd like to only trade SPY, but I got the PDT rule to get over first, and i definatly won't deposit the cash required until my results proven themselves. But yeah i usually trade the same 3 to 5 stocks every day, mostly TCK, G, the big 5 canadian banks, and POT. I can get over the PDT rule by trading canadian stocks only.
Rolando87: You said that you can get around the pdt rule by trading canadian stocks. Is that with an american broker and if so, which one?
X is one of the few stocks I trade with good frequency. It's a disaster, but the nice thing about it is, if I press the sell button, it is extremely likely that I can repurchase at a lower price. And I have been repurchasing. The strategy of sell & repurchase at a lower price limits my downside, and X is very much outpacing SPY going down. (X has a beta of 2.8)
well actually I'm based in Vancouver Canada, so I use interactive brokers canadian edition. There is no PDT rule on the TSX. My guess is that if you join an american brokerage that allows you to trade canadian stocks, such as IB, you don't have to worry about the PDT rule. Check interactive brokers and ask them first obviously, because I'm just assuming you can day trade all you want on canadian equities even if your based in the US, but I don't know for sure. Hope that helps
We teach becoming a "surrogate Specialist" vs. diving into new stocks everyday as PART of an overall trading strategy. Bring people to your poker game vs. going to a new game every day. FWIW, Don
I trade about 4-5 stocks day after day after day. You do get to know the intra-day ranges and also where there's support/resistance. You can almost get in a zone where it's like an ATM if you know where to set your profit targets and trade size you're comfortable with.