Trying to understand day trading restrictions

Alpaca Trading
1

Hi everyone:

This is my first post and I am trying to do research on how to do this properly. I am making a program to buy and sell one stock about every couple minutes. I was wondering if the paper trading account will let me do that if i use 10000 for each trade? Its really day trading as in it will buy a stock and then sell it a couple minutes later. I am just trying to avoid having my orders rejected for day trading. Im just not sure of all the requirements. The paper account has 100000 equity and Im reading that you have to have over 25K and then you can day trade, so if I buy 10K worth of 1 stock and then sell it 4 minutes later, does that sell automatically go back to my equity? Maybe if I lower the 10K down to 1K?

Thank you for your time

2

Take your money and run… They restrict selling when you get to 3 day trades. Only broker that does this. So they don’t even allow you to become a PDT. The result is if you are in a bad position you just bleed money with nothing you can do about it.

3

im testing on my paper account and it is working the right way. Isnt it supposed to be the same with a real account? Thats what I was hoping for. Are you saying that they treat real accounts different than testing paper accounts?

4

If you get to 3 day trades and have a position that starts selling off you can’t sell it. They allow you to buy more but you cant sell. Only broker that does this.

And try to email them to reset the PDT which everyone does once…they don’t respond and have no support phone number

5

I must have made 150 trades today on my paper account. It says all you have to do is have over 25000 equity to keep day trading

6

Yeah thats true.

Point im making that if you have 20k they restrict SELLING not buying… And have zero customer support

7

@BullHazard Arent they just following rules by Finra listed here:
https://www.finra.org/investors/learn-to-invest/advanced-investing/day-trading-margin-requirements-know-rules

I have flerted with the line each week but I think they do that to keep us from having a bot that accidently gets us flagged as day traders.

From what I gather from reading the manual:

  • Buying and Selling the same stock in a day counts as 1 round trip and is 1 day trade.
  • Shorting a stock and covering(buying) the same stock that day counts as 1 day trade.
  • Buying a stock Thursday but Selling it Friday(waiting till next day) doesnt count.

if you have over 25k the rules dont apply. I think they would restrict buying if it would cause a daytrade in the case of shorting but I could be wrong. I think its just about keeping those numbers in check so Finra doesnt drop the hammer on them.