Stock Trading and Other Things

Since in recent years, stock trades have a settlement time of a couple of days, has day trading signicantly..?

decreased? (If someone is trying to do day trades with $40,000 or less, then they will not be able to do too many trades since their money will be locked up during the settlement time. Is there a rule that lets day traders overcome this hurdle?)

Public Comments

1. The industry ALWAYS had a settlement date and a trade date, a few years back, the settlement day was moved from five business days to three business following the trade date.

Since the late fifties, all broker/dealers maintain their books on a settlement basis, prior to that there were some that did keep their books on a trade date basis.

The change had absolutely nothing to do with or had any effect of day trading.

There is "NO HURDLE", nor has there ever been one.

The problem that exist over the confusion of trade date/settlement date is that many novices and those that do not know what they're doing are trying to day trade.

If you're going to do any investing and/or trading, you should know the rules and regulations governing your actions.
If you don't know the rules of the game, you shouldn't paly it.

2. Yes, it's called a margin account. And I don't know of any brokers that will allow you to day trade outside of one. With a margin account, you buy stocks with money you borrow from the broker (you pay interest on open margins). This way your money isn't tied up during trade settlement. Of course, you have to keep cash or stock in your account as collateral against the margin loan.

3. Day trading is pretty common in the forex markets -- the largest in the world. Specially with such rapid currency fluctuations, I've seen these guys scale up their operations over the past year.

4. WARNING: For Only Stockers!! http://www.StockQuoteUSA.org