If you are flagged as a PATTERN DAY TRADER by your brokerage, you need to have a minimum of 25K USD in your account (equities+cash). In the US, a a pattern day trader is any account that executes four or more round-trip day trades within any rolling five-business-day period
The transaction cost have substantially gone down in the recent years. My brokerage firm only charges 10.99$ flat per transaction (regardless of type/size of the order)..there are some others who charge even less…so dont think that is a consideration anymore.
^ aha! you use ameritrade? they charge me same but one thing I don't like is when I sold something they sold in 2 parts (one today and one tomorrow) and charged me 2 commissions!
thx for advise on my questions which I think are on the money! I will do what you said I think.
I'm not a trader or anything and but have lot of stock in Walmart, Royal Dutch, Tata Motor and Goldcorp. Exept Walmart all others are up about 70% (:)) since I got. Walmart is up only 6% from my cost. I am very happy for this lucky portfolio but scared if may be something goes wrong and these profits come down!
if you know about these (from above thread something tells me you are expert in the field), can you tell me if I should just sell now and enjoy the profit or leave it there if it will make more? Thx
I would lock in at least half the profits and run the rest.
Ok - I sold Tata motors and parts of the others. Glad to note that all of them seem to have come down a bit AFTER I took the profits.
Looking at the way the American markets have behaved this year, it is not going to for the faint hearted I think - look at what everybody was saying abut Google a month ago and now!
Oil stocks keep going up! I don't see any near term development that will bring down oil prices. what do you guys think about oil stock? will they keep going up up theough the year? even though they are all at record high prices now?
Gold does make me nervous - the temptation to take profits is high. Here again I have a question for experts - do countries stock gold and will they sell gold to take profits? if they do then supply goes up and prices have to come down, right? Countries that have to pay through their nose for oil, will need to raise money any way they can, including selling gold?