Quote from brynno:
Hi,
I've yet to make a single trade with real money, nor even a paper trade for that matter, but have spent months researching intraday stock trading and backtesting every day with pen and paper with consistent success.
However.. I've been doing all this with UK (LSE listed) stocks, largely because I'm british and naturally followed the FTSE when I first started out. How is this relevant to this post? Well apparently the 25000 dollar PDT minimum is only applicable to US stocks, leaving me (and anybody else) free to open an account with 10000 or so and daytrade UK stocks as often as I please.
Has anyone considered doing this as a way round the PDT minimum? If you have, but still only want to trade US stocks, then why is that? I can think of a few reasons why US stocks might be more attractive, but I don't think any are particularly significant, as far as I can tell you can capture just the same movement in exactly the same way, especially in the mornings; I'd say that at least while you're account is small any disadvantages of daytrading UK stocks are more than compensated for by the fact that you can trade them as often as you like and thus not have to deviate from your strategy for the sake of an arbitrary rule. Would anyone like to comment on this? I just want to make sure I haven't overlooked something important here before I start.
Apologies if I've interrupted the flow a bit here, but I do think it is relevant.
isnt there a stamp tax on uk stocks? meaning every time you buy a stock they add a fee of say 1%. makes it very difficult to daytade when your looking to make pennies. btw i have no idea what the transaction tax is in the uk. but there is no transaction tax inthe usa. only a sec tax that is minimal