That $25k is for those who are "pattern day traders" - those who do more than 3 "day trades" in a 5 day period. A "day trade" by definition is buying and selling the same security in the same day. If you don't do this more than 3 times in a week, you don't need the $25k minimum.
Not bad, don't invest everything or else, game over if you lose. Choose wisely, if you're a beginner start by something with low risk or else you won't even warm up your spot.
$25k is a good value to start with, I just wish I had that value so that I could start to make some real money. The problem sometimes is to get the initial capital to invest in.
Just an FYI you can use an oversea brokerage account like sure trader to avoid the PDT rule that being said you can also negotiate your commission rate if you plane to trade penny stocks instead of 4.95 per 1000 shares you can fenagle them down to 4.95 per 10,000 shares. Not that I have experience in trading yet I have decided to save 500-1000 as well before I jump in but I will be using suretrader until I can grow my acct to 25k+ for U.S. Brokers with unlimited trading.
Be very careful to make sure any $ put into overseas accounts is hopefully put into very reputable institutions that aren't likely to steal your $, or to become insolvent, or to be in countries with corrupt or unstable political environments that may lead to your $ otherwise "disappearing" on you.
Your account will lose the capability of completing any more than 3 such trades in any 5 day period. Your account will no longer be capable of transacting more than 3 day trades (same day buys and sells of the same security that day) in any 5 day period.
You should really demo it up or start very small. No point in risking bigger sums of money until you can make a profit on the demo or a low amount!
Real estate and gold are my pet investing avenues... haven't gotten into the stock market yet... not even penny stocks as a play-around-with hobby. BUT even not having researched much about this, I can say with pretty high confidence that no matter how many risks I'm willing to take on the market, one of those risks would *not* be using any kind of banking overseas in today's volatile world environment.
I think that those are safe investments real estate and gold, far from being as volatile as the stock market and if the choices are good, especially in real estate, the profits can be great too.
