The $25,000 rule is gone
FINRA Notice 26-10, the June 4, 2026 effective date, the October 2027 phase-in tail — and the $2,000 floor that survived.
Facts checked on October 22, 2026
Every beginner page written before mid-2026 teaches the same warning: four day trades in five business days in a margin account makes you a 'pattern day trader,' and pattern day traders must keep $25,000 in the account. That rule no longer exists. Much of the internet has not caught up — including, as of this writing, some brokers' own guidance pages and most prop firms' sales copy.
Adopted in 2001 after the dot-com crash, the PDT framework (part of FINRA Rule 4210) counted day trades. Cross four in five business days in a margin account and your account was designated; designated accounts needed $25,000 minimum equity; fall below and the account was restricted. Cash accounts were never covered — they live under settlement rules instead — and futures were never covered at all, being regulated by the CFTC and the NFA.
The SEC approved FINRA's amendments on April 14, 2026 (filing SR-FINRA-2025-017). FINRA published Regulatory Notice 26-10 on April 20, 2026, and the amendments took effect June 4, 2026. The designation, the count and the $25,000 minimum are eliminated. In their place, amended Rule 4210 sets intraday margin standards: on any day you trade, your margin account's equity must cover the margin on the positions you hold during the day. Run an intraday margin deficit and you must meet it promptly; accounts that repeatedly leave deficits unmet can be restricted — some brokers describe a 90-day restriction for repeated failures. The $2,000 minimum equity for using margin at all remains, unchanged.
Firms that needed more time may phase the change in over 18 months, until October 20, 2027. Day-one adopters (Robinhood, Webull, tastytrade, Public, moomoo, Fidelity) state June 4, 2026; Schwab states June 8 and E*TRADE June 9; Interactive Brokers says the minimum 'is being removed' with no date published; several household names have published nothing we can find. Your account lives under your broker's implementation, not under the headline — which is why this site maintains a dated tracker, broker by broker, from the brokers' own pages.
The economics. Day trading's published base rate — about 5% of day traders profitable after costs in full-market studies — was never caused by the $25,000 rule, and repealing the rule does not repeal it. Nor did costs change: at beginner frequency, spread and slippage at small size still run about $20 a month, which is why our computed minimum for day trading is $1,000 with or without the old rule. The repeal changed who is allowed to try. This site exists to price the trying.
Anyone still selling you a way to 'bypass PDT' in late 2026 is selling a bypass around a demolished wall. Ask what else in their pitch is a year out of date.
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The verdict gives you the arithmetic for your market and your capital. The Start-or-Wait Kit gives you the complete workbook: the demo-record audit (the 50-trade review grid), the staged capital plan up to your market's minimum viable capital, the 90-day learning plan week by week, and the real-cost tracker — the spreadsheet experienced traders build by hand, ready to fill in.
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Sources: FINRA Regulatory Notice 26-10 (April 20, 2026) and the brokers' own pages for the PDT tracker; ESMA Decision (EU) 2018/796 and the AMF restatement for European CFD loss figures; ASIC Report 828 (FY2023–24) for Australia; CFTC retail forex materials for the United States; Barber, Lee, Liu & Odean (Taiwan market data) and Chague & De Losso (Brazil) for day-trading outcomes; the FPFX Technology dataset of 300,000+ prop-firm accounts, reported by Finance Magnates (2024); broker-published minimum deposits and margin schedules as dated on the dataset page. If a figure has moved since our check date, the issuer's own publication wins — and write to help@doogex.com so we can correct ours.