Good faith violation calculator: unsettled cash, the second sale and the restriction
In a cash account, selling a stock you bought with unsettled money can cost you. Enter the trades and see if it counts.
How it works: in a cash account, the money from a sale is not yours to use until it settles. A good faith violation happens in three steps. You sell. You buy something with that unsettled money. Then you sell the new stock before the first sale settles. This page spends your settled cash first. Whatever the purchase needs beyond that came from unsettled money. If you sold the new stock before the first sale settled, that is a violation. Day 0 is the day of sale 1. A sale on the settle day or later is fine.
The sale that counts
Buying with unsettled cash is allowed. Selling that stock too soon is the problem. The sale that breaks the rule is sale 2, because you sold something you did not fully pay for with settled money. Waiting one more day fixes it. The longer story is in unsettled cash bought the fall.
The count is what hurts
One violation is usually a warning. A few of them lead to a restriction. Then every purchase needs settled cash first. That is slower than it sounds. Each sale takes days to free up. See the settlement date and how a cash account differs from a margin one in cash versus margin account. The count and the days are your broker's numbers, so type your own.
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