 Pattern day trader

In the United States, a pattern day trader is a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) designation for a stock trader who executes four or more day trades in five business days in a margin account, provided the number of day trades are more than six percent of the customer's total trading activity for that same five-day period.A FINRA rule applies to any customer who buys and sells a particular security in the same trading day (day trades), and does this four or more times in any five consecutive business day period; the rule applies to margin accounts, but not to cash accounts.