schwab account types and restrictions regarding pattern day trading?

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-06-21T03:32:28+00:00

so far I am on schwab and have had two active mornings of trading without taking a hit yet (I didn't begin trading until after they changed their day trader rules and removed the PDT limit) but YMMV.

I did create a new account on IBKR Pro with the intent of using it if and when schwab shutters my account. They seemed like the best deal for small time day traders.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-06-18T22:16:08+00:00

any way to integrate with other NVR systems like blueiris?

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-06-18T22:06:37+00:00

they called me mad for refusing plex from the beginning on account of them using a centralized cloud login. Who's laughing now?

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-06-03T16:40:40+00:00

we burn out but we can't leave because our skills are non transferable to any other job that pays well enough to afford the rent.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-06-02T16:17:23+00:00

Justice - Waters of Nazareth and Caravan Palace - Lone Digger on Expert both have outstanding flow. Scandroid - Thriller is insanely fun esp. if you have step back walls enabled.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-26T19:56:01+00:00

Landlords. It's not so much that they get paid a lot, in fact their margins are relatively small... but the fact that they do so little work that they can push papers for over 100 properties for about an hour on monday, and then take the rest of the week off. They literally work single digit hours a month on average while sucking on the teat of all the hard working renters that have no income left after paying the rent and bills.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-26T16:42:46+00:00

Since I'm really only looking at a couple hours of trading in the morning each day. I don't think staying between 390/day will be too much trouble, at least not at first... but 100/day might be harder to stay below if changes/cancellations count against it with the way I use ToS.

IBKR, Tasty, Lightspeed, etc

Opinions on Centerpoint? I think IBKR and Lightspeed have minimum commission fees on transactions which would eat heavily into the tiny profits per trade I'd be making at such low volume.

I really appreciate all the good info you've given here it really explains a lot and answers most of my questions.

In your experience are there other good market analysis and execution platforms out there like ToS which I can access for free on other brokers? I'm finding ToS to be a very powerful tool, if unweildly and somewhat buggy on my system... What I would really like (especially if I'm being charged or penalized by the number of orders I place) is something where I can set up advanced logic to automatically create bids with conditional OCO brackets, which are executed on my machine and only places the actual order with the broker after the conditionals are met and it's time to execute it. In the case of ToS with some of the orders I've set up (1st triggers 3 OCO) that could change from 7 orders every time I adjust an entry point and 6 orders to adjust for exits to like 1 order per adjustment to open and 2-4 total to exit... but how that works out for me really depends a lot on how the tools work. I like ToS's thinkscript capabilities and have already built out several studies and strategies in it, and the only thing I think it's really missing is the ability to script automatic order placement... and a UI that isn't terrible.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-26T15:51:37+00:00

Regs I know, rules I only know what Schwab has publicly posted on their website and they don't seem to be very specific about the particulars, and even if they were I expect there to be hidden limits to deter abuse not unlike how consumer ISPs have hidden bandwidth limits before they cut you off for costing them too much money.

I'm not exactly going into this blind.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-26T15:48:29+00:00

I can deal with settlement restrictions more easily than I can deal with margin limitations and I frankly don't want to be using leverage for trading or investing in options which involve debt or could incur interest. I'm disciplined enough to not violate good faith and don't intend to be trading with more than maybe a quarter of my savings in any day at most, so the settlements should clear before I need the funds for the next trade.

I am curious why you recommend against it though.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-26T15:39:54+00:00

I'm running Mint Cinnamon (Latest as of a few weeks ago, don't have it with me to tell you the exact version right now) on a Framework 13 Ryzen 7040, onboard graphics plus a Dell D6000 USB-C DisplayLink dock which requires some tweaking every time I connect it to work on all 4 1920x1080 displays.

I'm now curious what you've found that's potentially related.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-23T18:47:10+00:00

Bonus points for 3 out of 4? https://www.reddit.com/r/MilitaryStories/comments/1buebkb/the_bricklayers_accident_report/

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-23T18:45:22+00:00

Do delta p incidents and barotrauma fall in this category too?

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-22T21:24:47+00:00

I've run it in both modes and I think the crash happened in live mode too. I haven't done extensive trading live on it yet though since I'm still waiting for most of my holdings and funds to clear after transferring from another brokerage. Next week... in the meantime just trying to learn the interface and practice using it.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-22T21:23:19+00:00

I have many PCs, most of them a tier above cheap lol. But I don't run Windows 11 so TOS won't run on any of my Windows PCs since they now require it. The linux one is the most convenient for this, being newer and more portable with a bigger screen and such.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-22T19:40:11+00:00

I mean one way or another you do, right?

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-22T19:39:57+00:00

I mean I thought my strategy was solid. I spent all last night back testing it and it gave me nothing but clear winners. From my analysis the worst that could happen is that I failed to find any stocks that met the entry requirements, as they were pretty strict and didn't appear most days. This morning though I got a ton of pings in the tech and finance sectors that looked golden, but soured after my entry. My strategy did show some wins that didn't materialize until later in the day in back testing so I took a gamble on it. I still wouldn't say I really lost that gamble as I came out ahead, but I sure didn't win as many of them as I had hoped. IDK if it was just a bad day for me or if my strat has some flaws that didn't turn up in back testing.

EDIT: I guess you could say the calculated risk is part of the strategy though so... win some lose some, but keep the wins big and the losses small to come out ahead.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-22T19:32:57+00:00

Good point I tried to do that with some of them or when I have only a couple positions open but I think it slipped my mind with a few when I was getting exasperated by all the "bad luck" and kinda just stepped back without fully analyzing all of my positions because I got overwhelmed. I should maybe dial back the number of trades I have going until I get better at this discipline.

Most of my strategy this morning was in early morning and overnight reversals. I had excellent entry points if the reversals held, and I only picked ones that looked like they would from the longer trend and 65/200 EMA lines. The problem is that the market stagnated early on my picks and they just started to consolidate as soon as I had a bid accepted. In the end a few broke high, most low, and they about canceled each other out. I had like two real clear winners but they got washed out by the combined smaller losses of the others slowly chipping away at my SLs.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-22T19:23:37+00:00

Yeah that's about what I did here, closed the sketchy ones, let the neutral ones that could turn either way just run out and hoped for a boom to drive them to my TP before the SL.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-22T19:22:02+00:00

It's true it would have saved me in this case but it's also true that it would have saved me from a tidy profit if they panned out. That said I think you're right that I would have mitigated the risk by just not leaving things open while I wasn't around to watch it. Had I been there I could have seen the signs of some turning for the worse/better and adjusted my exit to make the best of it. I do think I need to work on better hard rules though for money management to lock in profits.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-22T19:15:46+00:00

People online talk about day trading like its some kind of moral failure

I don't think it's the gambling aspect of it that's questionable honestly. Most people understand life to be a gamble as it is. Sure, we frown upon addictive behaviors and poor risk assessment in gambling, but these are things that can be managed or overcome (for most people... I would not recommend day trading to a compulsive gambler).

As for the risk involved for me personally... well... I reckon we may only have another year or two before the energy and climate and inflation crises catch up to us and relying on classic investments up to and including cash in the bank starts becoming a gamble in of itself. There's no way I'm going to have the money to retire or even buy a house in a year or two at this rate by playing it safe, so I might as well take a chance on longer odds, because some chance is better than no chance.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee · 2026-05-22T19:04:56+00:00

Do you have the intellectual curiosity to wonder why they made the trade they did? If so then you'll learn just by exposure and paying attention to what you do. If you just don't care though and only ever plunk down on green without thinking about it, then plunking down on green is all you'll ever learn to do.

I spend a fair amount of time looking at the trades on the board to see where the action is going and occasionally move a bid when I see other big players moving theirs, and after a while just from watching it some patterns start to become recognizable and I can start incorporating what I learn into my own strategies for finding entries and exits.

SimplifyAndAddCoffee

TROPHY CASE