The PDT rule is gone. Four months on, here is what actually changed.

What changed on 4 June

In April we wrote that the pattern day trader rule was about to go. It went. The SEC approved FINRA's amendments to Rule 4210 on 14 April 2026, FINRA published Regulatory Notice 26-10 on 20 April, and the amendments took effect on 4 June 2026. The day-trade count that designated a "pattern day trader" and the $25,000 minimum equity requirement were removed in their entirety.

In their place sit intraday margin standards. A firm now has to work out an intraday margin deficit for a margin account on any day with a transaction that reduces the account's intraday margin level, on top of the regular maintenance margin that has not changed. A deficit that does not exceed the lesser of 5 percent of account equity or $1,000, or that arises under extraordinary circumstances, is not treated as a failure to meet it promptly.

The part most articles skipped is the phase-in. Firms that need more time may keep using the old day-trading requirements until 20 October 2027, eighteen months after the notice. So whether your account still counts day trades depends on your broker, not on the calendar.

What brokers did

Charles Schwab moved early. From 8 June it stopped counting day trades in margin accounts and removed the pattern day trader status from flagged accounts below $25,000; accounts above that level kept their day-trading buying power as long as equity stayed above it at the start of the day. Schwab said it would then introduce an intraday margin buying power for eligible margin accounts, based on the account's equity and open positions and updated during the day.

TradeStation describes the same shape with a number on it: the threshold for intraday margin buying power in a margin account is $2,000 of margin equity, and below that the intraday buying power is limited to one times margin excess.

Other firms may still be running the old regime, and the SEC's investor bulletin says so plainly: during the transition your firm may continue to apply the day-trading margin requirements. If you trade at more than one broker, read each one's margin page rather than assuming the rule change reached them all.

What did not change

Your edge. The rule never made anyone profitable or unprofitable; it rationed how often a small account could try. A trader with a 48 percent win rate and an average loss larger than the average win loses money at three day trades a week and loses it faster at thirty. Access went up. The arithmetic stayed where it was.

Costs did not change either. Spreads, commissions where they exist, and slippage on fast entries scale with trade count, and the trade count is now yours to set. That is the real change: the constraint moved from the rulebook to you.

Five numbers to watch now that the counter is gone

The old rule gave every small account one free statistic: trades per week, enforced. If you want to keep the benefit without the restriction, count a few things yourself.

• Trades per day, against the number you planned before the open. The gap is the first thing to look at on a red day.
• Trades taken within an hour of a planned stop. These are the recovery trades, and in most journals we have seen they are the costliest group by far.
• Size after a loss, as a multiple of the size before it. Doubling after a stop is a decision; make sure it was one.
• Net result after fees, not gross. More trades mean the difference between the two grows.
• Decision quality, graded separately from the outcome: did the entry meet the setup's rules, and was the exit the planned one?

A rule set to replace the one FINRA removed

None of this needs software. A notebook works. Decide a daily loss limit and a maximum number of trades before the session; after a planned stop, step away for a fixed time before the next entry; and review the day before the next one starts, with the trades graded on process rather than P&L.

If you keep the record in Leaf Edge, the daily review walks those steps in order, Reports can group your trades by entry hour or by tag so the recovery trades have their own line, and Sage reads the lot when you ask what is actually hurting your results. That is the whole point of a trading record in a world without the PDT rule: the constraint you choose, written down, checked daily.