Investor Help (NO Ihub questions)

[cintrix]

once my restriction is over will I be able to sell a stock and buy another in the same day, as long as I was in the first stock more than three days and stay in the new for at least three days?


It depends on how much you have in your account. I think you are getting confused about how many days vs unsettled funds. If you sell a stock and don't have any other funds in your account other than the proceeds from that sale, then you are using unsettled funds to purchase your new stock. If that is the case, they will allow you to buy another stock with that money but you can't sell the new one until the sale of the one you sold is settled. But if you have excess cash - say you have 10k in your account after selling a position that had proceeds of say 8k. Then only 8k of that money is unsettled - you would still have 2k available to buy something with and sell it in the same day - because that 2k were settled funds.

Now, another poster mentioned a margin account. If you changed your cash account to a margin account you would not have to worry about T+3 (settlement). You don't even have to use margin in order to have a margin account. But it allows you to use unsettled funds for trading while a cash account doesn't. But one thing you need to know with a margin account is that if you have under 25k in your account they track your daytrading and you can't day trade four or more times in five business days. If you do and your account is under 25k they will put a restriction on your account. If you are a pattern daytrader and have over 25k you don't need to worry about anything.