I kept on getting insufficient day trade buying power as of last week. which found today despite selling half of the portfolio worth stocks and cash tripled, the DT buying power error message did not go away, and is still stuck at original dollar value it complaint before selling stocks. DT is a bogus rule that gets thrown and does not update when stocks are sold to free up the DT power.
WHAT a great BUG alpaca has . Its a useless and bogus algo platform like I mentioned on my first article on this Forum. It takes 3 days for alpaca guys to answer your question, No phone to contact, No rapid emails or chats, the slowest service on the planet at the time when trading companies are becoming lightening fast in the era of AI
@Andy_S The first thing to understand is there are several ‘buying powers’. The two main ones are regt_buying_power and daytrading_buying_power.
regt_buying_power varies in real time and is the amount one can use to open new positions which will be held overnight. The max daytrading_buying_power is fixed at the beginning of each day based upon the previous end of day equity and is the amount one can use to open new positions which will be held intra-day (ie day traded). It is debited and credited as a day trade is opened then closed. There is a bit on buying power in the docs here and also a more in depth description on the SEC website here.
The reason “why the DT buying power still stuck at 2334” is because that was the beginning of day DTBP. The DTBP will never exceed that. This is calculated at the beginning of each day as below, and the current DTBP is simply that value less the net of all day trades made during the day.
max_dtbp = previous_excess_equity x 4
max_dtbp = (last_equity - last_maintenance_margin) x 4
current_dtbp = max_dtbp - net_day_trades_for_the_day
In this specific case the values were
max_dtbp = (90,098.04 - 89,501.28) x 4
max_dtbp = 596.76 x 4
current_dtbp = 2387.04 - 53.04
current_dtbp = 2334
The DTBP is really independent from the current holdings.
okay, thanks for the explanation Dan. I understood all the trading powers but my concern is I am completely blocked out from further trading even after selling every single stock I had. Despite cash 90k and buying power over 181k , because DT buying power is stuck at 2334 as you mentioned it starts from the beginning of the day and never changes, but this does not help us as I am dead in water as of now. I literally waste one whole day for the DT bp to reset over night. This goes against the algo spirit.
