This article talks about:

• Default Buying Power and Margin
  • Need more buying power?
  • Account Value
• Risk Management
  • HTB and ETB (Hard to Borrow and Easy To Borrow)
  • Short sale restrictions

Default Buying Power and Margin

By default, this simulator does not have any PDT restrictions or cash account emulation. Traders should be able to trade freely like with an offshore broker that is unbound by the PDT rule.

All newly made accounts start with a $25,000 cash balance that gives:

• 4x buying power for all stocks
• total buying power of $100,000.

These settings intend to emulate modern brokerages' risk systems. Our support team can adjust this to your preference (submit a request via our Support Room or a support ticket),

You can also add a certain margin for up to or under a certain $ amount, like some brokerages have in place. For example, we can add parameters such as: 

• 2X margin for stocks between $2 to $4.
• 6x margin for stocks over $4.
• No margin ($25,000) for stocks under $2.

Need more buying power?

We do not find that members need more buying power daily since it is already a large sum, and buying power is reset daily as long as no positions are held over from the previous day.

If you lose your starting cash for the day and close all your positions, you will have that same cash value back the next day. The sim cannot aggregate your profit and loss to adjust your buying power at this time.

We suggest you review the internal metrics to see aggregated profit and loss with up to 6 months of metrics data (see metrics guide here) .

Account Value

You can see your daily account value by going to your main Windows tab > Account Values:

If you want your account to align more closely with the value you will be using when you go live, we can change your account to start with a different amount. Please let us know the exact buying power in addition to the cash value you would like.

Please submit a support ticket or email [email protected] with the details so we can set this up for you. Pro members can also request this during our Support Room hours.

Risk Management

HTB and ETB (Hard to Borrow and Easy To Borrow)

We also have a default Easy to Borrow (ETB) list. Stocks that are not listed on the ETB list cannot be shorted and are considered Hard to Borrow.

You will see this at the bottom of your level two.

Keep in mind that each broker will have a different ETB list.

You may request that our Support Team adjust this setting so that:

• you are no longer on an HTB list, or
• you are using a the Lightspeed ETB list instead of the CMEG ETB list, which is default.

Short sale restrictions

On top of the default HTB list that might prevent you from going short, we can also implement a short sale restriction to prevent traders from going short with more sell orders out than they have in position size.

For beginner traders getting accustomed to hotkeys and buying and selling, this can be helpful. This may, however, be more of an annoyance to traders who know how to cancel open orders or have many open-close orders for a position at the same time.

We can add or remove this restriction for you if you want more freedom or restraint around your account.

Keep in mind that most brokers have no short sale restrictions on ETB stocks, and more than one sell order will put you in a short position. It is therefore good to ultimately practice trading without a short sale restriction.