Seeing how support is ignoring its community on such important matters is sad. I was thinking of using Alpaca for my app, not anymore. Once a company like Alpaca opens up outside the U.S., it will immediately grow more popular due to supporting day trading for beginners.
As a UK trader, I was also hoping that I would be exempt from PDT rules, but it seems that the residence/citizenship of the trader is not relevant:
Pattern day trading (PDT) is the act of buying and selling the same financial market, such as forex or shares, on the same day, on the same margin trading account. To be considered a pattern day trader, you must be using an account that’s regulated by FINRA in the US, and execute more than four day trades on your margin account in a five-day period. (from IG.co.uk)
So it seems that, because we are using a FINRA-regulated broker (Alpaca Securities LLC), we are all subject to the US rules, even if we are foreign citizens not living in the US.
I don’t know if it would be possible for Alpaca to offer accounts that are not regulated by FINRA. If so, it would be great if they could offer tax-free ISAs for us Brits…
Hello! Apologies on the late reply. Since we are a regulated FINRA broker, accounts with Alpaca must adhere to US and FINRA rules and laws, those include PDT rules.
We naturally place limitations on accounts that have less than $25K. An account is designated as a Pattern Day Trader if it makes four (4) day trades within five (5) business days. Day trades less than this criteria will not flag the account for PDT. Finally, if an order could potentially result in the account being flagged as a PDT, the order is rejected, and the API returns error with HTTP status code 403 (Forbidden).
For more information please check out our documentation on pattern day traders here