i still dont have a good handle on ptd. my account was small to start and i limited myself to no more than 3 day trades per 5 days. Account has grown and i now have over 25K... so my understanding was that i could increase number of day trades as long as i maintain 25K. so yesterday i exceeded the 3 trades per 5 days and it triggered pdt status.. also yesterday i had 5 k in cash available for withdrawal. Today that 5 k is available for trades but i can not withdraw it until feb 17?? why are they holding my funds? (i am allowed to trade with it, just not withdraw it) It is my understanding that once triggering pdt status that stays in effect even if i didnt do a day trade for weeks. But that raised a hypothetical.. what if i needed to withdraw a large amount (by cashing out stock ) lets say for taxes.. and that decreased my account to below 25K.. what are the options? (if i had to take money out, putting money back in to get back to 25K wouldnt be done quickly.... so what are the penalties? could you go back to less than 4 day trades, or are you not allowed to day trade at all. Seems strange that they withold funds from withdrawal for 5 days. (which they didnt do before) and that you basically can't access 25K of you funds at some point without penalty. Could some one clarify for me?

Last week just a disaster for me.. had 3 days of etrade being seriously slow and one day of that i watched as my holdings went down, kept going down and i couldnt open my etrade trade page... saw one go down 60% in 25 minutes and nothing i could do (during the gamestop, amc, reddit time)... having to re-calibrate now, stuck in some of the positions and will be selling/sold for large losses. (have to update) .

January going well so far!

@retire56 just became a fully transparent trader today!