Hi. Does anyone know. Or does anyone scalp trade in their ISA account? Im new here and i don’t want to get my account blocked, but i believe the rules states that scalping isn’t allowed in CFD account. Can anyone guide me please?
Hi Aisha, welcome to the community 
While scalping is not a tolerated trading strategy for leveraged accounts, you are free to hold the positions you have on Invest and ISA for as long as you wish. Day trading is allowed.
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Thank you. Just as i thought. Thank you for confirming
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Just dont forget to account for the fx fee when you buy non GBP instruments otherwise you will be wondering why you loosing money
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Hi, good point. I usually trade nasdaq stocks. Does anyone know that when we trade in t212 demo account, are the rate diffrence charges included in our profits?
Profits are clean, eg you buy something for100 you sell it for 101.15 your profit should say 1 and fx fee of .15
@KrisG you confirmed here that day trading is allowed, then why are some people given pauses on their account for making lots of trades, even when they are up and not suffering any losses?
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Same.
I wouldn’t day trade /scalp anything other than UK stocks within an ISA, purely because of the FX fee. And even then, I still wouldn’t do it on T212. (Reason: I personally need to be able to set up shortcuts / hotkeys to trade. I also use a price ladder.)
You pay an FX fee to get into a trade, and another FX fee to get out.
Run a test on your end, but for me, it’s clear, I’ve tried and it doesn’t make sense.
Use a different broker for day trades / scalps.
I’m going to mention the two brokers In my next comment. Not sure if I can mention other brokers on here, so if my comment gets removed at least the above info will remain.
I personally use Charles Schwab on the Thinkorswim platform.
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Great platform/broker - try it out.
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But you need to have at least $25k in your account to day trade (I would recommend at least $30k).
Interactive Brokers
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I’m currently testing this right now, so other than the overwhelming good reviews that I’m hearing (and some against IB) I can’t personally say that I’ve tried it and it’s amazing.
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A Google search says the $25k minimum funds also applies to day trade in IB, but again, please double-check yourself. I’ve actually overlooked this aspect, and just assumed they don’t have this rule for outside-US users.
@Aisha777 out of interest, how long have you day-traded for?
Best of luck 
@Heyinvest, while day trading in Invest & ISA is allowed, there are factors that could trigger trading pauses. Those factors are dynamic and adjust based on the reported financial situation and account activity. For example, income, savings, risk tolerance, employment status, and investment activities are all taken into account.
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@Vio what do you like about charles schwab? are you based in the uk? hows the experience with ibkr going?
i have an account with charles schweb, easy to use, free trades, they have started to allow fractional shares for s&p 500 companies recently. a good research tool on their system.
you need to be able to send them USD, if you send GBP it can work out expensive with fees and conversion, either by holing a USD account in UK or using one of the virtual banks like monzo or revolut.
i dont do day trading, so cant comment on that
Mainly their trading platform: Thinkorswim (aka TOS).
You can get in and out of trades extremely quickly - as in you can use hotkeys/shortcuts to buy/sell. I also have an external programmable keypad, so instead of pressing a combination of keys to get in/out of a trade, I just press one key.
Their Active Trader (ladder) window is easy-to-use, very responsive — no issues there. You have buttons for number of shares you wish to trade, or you can input the number manually in a box. Then you can press your hotkey to trade, or click on a bid/ask price in the ladder window to set limit orders.
TOS/Schwab allows you to paper trade - you can use the paper trade account type (before logging in) where the hotkeys work - or the paper trade in the live account where hotkeys don’t seem to work (at least for me). Don’t know the exact difference between the two. I use the paper trading account (from login screen) to paper trade in real time, and the paper trading feature (called OnDemand) in the live account type to trade specific days in the past - you can select date, time, reset/set your funds balance. The OnDemand (paper trading) feature once logged into the live account, doesn’t let you trade the prior week (actually, it might be 2 weeks), but anything before that works (not sure how far back).
TOS takes a while to start up - before it opens, it checks for and does updates - seems like they have an update every day or every other day.
The bad thing about Schwab is that there are quite a few stocks that are Hard to Borrow, meaning you won’t be able to short them. (There is a way of requesting shares to borrow, but I don’t want to do that.)
So with TOS, you’ll need a second broker to short. That’s the reason I wanted to look into IB.
Yes, London.
Schwab have the PDT rule. You’ll need to deposit at least $25k to be able to day trade. I’d say deposit at least $30k.
According to my quick analysis, it’d be way more convenient and less expesive to deposit to Schwab, have them convert GBP into USD (I don’t remember being charged for this, but maybe), trade in USD, and only incur an FX fee when withdrawing funds into your UK bank account (which I believe is only $15 regardless of amount - please look into this, as I only withdrew once, so I could be wrong; this is just what happend to me + the info I found online about the withdrawl expence; if different, please let me know too, as I’d like to know if I’m wrong).
Regarding fees, there are fees - at least when it comes to their margin account (which allows you to short) - but the fees are minimal, maybe $10/week if you trade 7/8 stocks a day (in and out of trades). Look into fees yourself to be sure, this is a bit of guesstimating.
I set it aside for a bit. I need to call them to help me set up my hotkeys to buy/sell in a similar way to TOS. Currently, I can’t figure it out. I always get a “no specificed quantity” message, and it requires me to manually input the shares after pressing the button, even if I already entered number of shares in before pressing my hotkey. 
I need to give them a call, but it’s inconvenient, so I just delayed it.
Further info on TOS/Schwab.
You get 2:1 leverage on the margin account.
TOS doesn’t have an in-built pre-/post-market price indicator on the chart. So if you were to look at a stock that closed at $5 the previous day, in the premarket it won’t show the pre-market price on the chart. However, it has multiple ways to tell the most recent bid/ask (just above your chart, in the top bar, and I believe in a watchlist, you definitely can add bid/ask, but you may also be able to actually add a pre-/post-market price, not sure as I don’t use this currently).
If you’re familiar with TradingView, TOS doesn’t have an inbuilt long/short position tool to show the target P/L, risk-to-reward etc.
TOS does allow you to build your own indicators and tools with coding - not something I’ve explored as I’m clueless.
TOS also keeps track of the exact companies you traded, so at any point you can look back and see what you traded on what day. (Can be good to see where you made the most money.)
Hope it helps.
Hi Abey, not sure what account you have & how you’re using Charles Schwab.
For myself, I just had a look, when depositing into my account (twice now):
I deposited GBP. Schwab never charged me a fee for depositing GBP or converting it into USD.
I have done wire transfers. From my bank app into their London-based Citibank.
As previously shared, they charged me a $15 fee for withdrawing (for the USD to GBP conversion):
Abey, maybe the way you deposited funds caused the fees, but not on my end. But again, I’m not sure how you deposited and what account type you have, what you use it for, etc. So you may be 100% right in the way that you use Charles Schwab.
Still, I would talk to them about the best way for you to deposit, as Schwab recommended me the wire transfer way and I’ve had no fees incurred.
your experience appears to differ from mine, i dont day trade or use the TOS.
i have never been charge fees to trade, unless its change, i bank transfer funds from uk to charles schweb, they were charging a fee to receive any currency other that USD and i could get better exchange elsewhere. the amount of USD i sent was the same as what arrived in my account.
Same here, they charge pennies for trading 5-, 10-, 15,000 shares at a time.
There are a few different kinds of wire transfers (which got me confused at first). I would talk to them to see if there’s a better, fee-free way to deposit, so you don’t pay the FX conversion fee from them or anyone else. They do have a live chat feature on their site, if more suitable.
I do find that the speed at which you get funds in and out of the Schwab account is slower (same for Interactive Brokers), as supposed to T212 for example (where yesterday it took 20 seconds to withdraw funds). But I think that’s because the funds need to clear and then be transferred or attributed the US brokerage account.
I think it was 3 to 5 business days for my transfers. (I don’t remember exactly.)
it will be certainly worth me asking, i will do that
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