Regarding the 3 in 5 Rule

"One question: To get in and out of a stock quickly may mean doing so in the same day; maybe the entry and the exit may be only hours, or less, apart. My accounts are
substantially below the $25,000 minimum, so I have to be careful to avoid trading more
than three intraday round trips in a five-day rolling period. Some of the p&d's shoot up like a rocket only to fall back to earth twice as fast. What do you suggest I do to avoid
violating the 3-in-5 rule?"

You are very correct with regard to some, and often even most of these plays. The first thing we should do is to eradicate fear from your trades. I'm working with another young man at the moment who had the opportunity to lock down his 50% gain on a recent runner. He had his sell order entered already and everthing, but when the stock began to move toward his set target price, he cancelled his order because it would've meant a good-faith violation against him.

Now, this is something that we had discussed beforehand. I don't know if you know it or not, but a good-faith violation (just to illustrate) does not fall into the category of a major threat to your trading activity. In fact, after three good-faith violations, your broker will simply make it to where you cannot enter a trade with unsettled funds, that's it. I knew that and had told him that, but having never been there, he was afraid and didn't pull the trigger. That fear is the difference between him sitting waiting for a 50% gain to settle and where he is now, sitting at a 50% loss waiting for an illusive PR to be released.

Think about it like this, according to the SEC guidelines, if one were to execute more than three intra-day trades within a five day, rolling period, then they would be classified PDT (Pattern Day Trader) and if your account was below the $25,0000 threshold, it would be frozen for ninety days, correct? Alright, if that were to happen, would that classification be placed upon you, your social security number and mark you, personally at all of your brokerage accounts, or would it apply only to the account from which you executed the 3+ trades? The answer is that it would only apply to the account that was in violation.

That being the case, the solution is masked within your original question... My accounts are substantially below the $25,000 minimum... How many accounts do you have? Did you know that you can enter up to 3 intra day trades from each of those accounts and be safe from PDT classification? I use Zecco for my trades and have two accounts there with them.

Another thing that I want to point out is this... did you realize that starting with just $1,000, if you were to only book profits of 50% per trade and then reinvest the full amount each time you do the next trade, then you would be well over your $25,000 threshold in only 10 trades or less... again, that's limiting profits to just 50%, which is a rather safe cap to have? Even from the same, one account, this could transpire over a little over one month.

Additionally, if you were to allow only two trades to run past 50%, as many of them would certainly do anyway, and let's say you booked 400% from one and 200% from another, then you have cut down the travel time to your $25,000 goal from 10 trades to just 4, if I have my math correct. So, when we're using reasonable figures and using tools that help us work with the guidelines, you can see how easy it becomes to do. Now we've reached the "safe zone" in just a little over a week.