No, I do not have to hold a trade for 3 days, but I do have to wait 3 days to reuse THE PROCEEDS from any trades I make on any given day. I can do as many roundtrips as I like provided I do not exceed the "cleared" cash available in the account that morning.
For example, if I had $20K in cleared cash that morning, I could make 20 roundtrip trades of $1,000 each, but I could only make 10 trades of $2,000 each. If I spent all the money I had that morning, even if I closed those trades and end the day with $25K in NON-cleared cash in the account, the next morning I could not trade at all because my cleared cash balance would be zero. On the third day my cleared cash from the earlier trades of $25K would be available to reuse to trade.
In other words, they don't care how many roundtrips I make, but I must make them using "cleared" cash, and cash from any trade takes 3 days to clear. BTW, there is some discussion going on right now about changing this to one day to clear since most trades are comuterized now, but the brokerage houses are arguing against this (of course). We shall see . . .
All of my on-line IRAs are run this way, and the only brokerage I know that applies PDT rules to CASH, in addition to margin, accounts is TradeStation.
N2B
By the way, in my last post on this subject, the last paragraph I meant to say my MARGIN accounts require $25K mini to avoid PDT status, not my cash accounts.
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