Really.."you'll have a half dozen startups "... That will be under water when your pre-lunch trade from your example goes South instead of North.
I'll also argue (rhetorically) that many smaller capitalized traders have probably been saved from themselves by this rule than have been hurt by some missed opportunity.
Why? They don't lose money when someone goes broke. They make money off of commissions and holding the money. Pretty sure Robinhood doesn't have many large accounts. I would at least think not.
Saving peoples ass from going bust.... thats their choice. They'll learn real soon trading is not for them.
Max, it's not a regulation thing. Look, I'm a libertarian on these things, you know that. If you want to do lines of blow off your hookers ass while shooting up heroin inbetween your toes, I say go for it. It's your money, your body. THIS is not that. You are talking about using "other people's money" to do what you want to do. That is not a right, but a privilege. The same goes for portfolio margin accounts. You are not "enititled" to risk based haircuts. That is also a privilege. If you are willing to use only your money, you can trade, f*ck, snort, or smoke whatever the hell you want.
Mav Mav Mav..., in this case that argument does not hold water.
A person with a 20K account has margin; $80K on marginable securities.
In fact... all the way down to $2K... a person has a margin account.
And
its a hell of a lot riskier for a firm to give someone margin
overnight than it is intraday. Big gaps can be handled intra-day and an account liquidated live. You can't do that overnight when a stock gaps down huge. Besides, they have so much risk management in place that applies to individual stocks that odds are they won't let someone buy a high risk stock on margin.... be it a huge account or a small account.
There is absolutely no difference risk-wise between what an account with 7K can do and an account with 50K can do. The risk incurred is exactly the same. They
both are using OPM. The ability to open and close a position in a two minute time-frame poses absolutely zero increased risk. One could argue the risk is less for the smaller sum. Limiting a sub-25K account to only 3 round trips in a week is silly and has no basis in risk. Since they both are using margin, that is not a valid argument.
Further... in a cash account... the individual can not short a stock, they can only go long. Shorting stocks in a non-margin account is prohibited. Someone with a 24.9K cash account can't short 1 share of TSLA. How fair is that?
So all of the above arguments are weak.
Sorry Mav.

(...here it comes... brace for impact Zany)