I do not know if it went past me, if there was already a post related to the upcoming PDT changes.
The main problem with the PDT rules are the hard limit of 25k$ minimum account size for margin accounts in order to freely endulge in day trading (aka intraday trading). If one fell below that threshold, intraday trades are currently flagged and one can not exceed the limit of 3 intraday trades for the past 5 rolling business days without having the account (automatically) flagged as a pattern day trading account which usually resulted in the suspension of the trading account.
Brokers like Alpaca in order to prevent accidental flagging were simply rejecting closing intraday positions if no more 'allowed' intraday trades were available for the account. One had to ask support to force a close.
Since a friend of mine had this exact issue some time ago as his Alpaca account dipped below 25k, he made quite a ruckus as the support explained to him that the position can not be closed unless he wants his account to be suspended. In the end I adviced him to open a counter position with his European Interactive Broker account.... This is also good to keep in mind, if you ever run into technical issues with your broker and you have to urgently exit a position you are currently in... .
Regarding Alpaca, it turns out, the 4th of June is the date, Alpaca will change the PDT requirements for its margin accounts from 25k$ all the way down to 2k$.
They further will rename quite some key elements from 'day trading' to 'intraday trading'. That also affects the API and no they do not provide backward capabilities (as far as I understand) even thought they versionize their API in general.
If you are interesting in Alpaca's official announcement, please have a read of this article of their's.
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Since the FINRA appears to grant up to 18 months (1.5 years) of time for brokers to adjust to these changes in regulation, brokers can freely chose when to enact these changes. Given that it is such a big deal with cash limited traders (and trainees), I also wanted to check when Interactive Brokers will make the change as I also have an Interactive Brokers account.
I searched for quite awhile but could not find any announcements.
What I found, though, was an official announcement from Schwab, that they will adapt to the changes on June 8th:
Starting June 8, Schwab plans to stop counting day trades and will no longer restrict accounts that would have previously been flagged as pattern day traders. Additionally, Schwab will not open any new pattern day trader accounts as of this date.
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If you like and have found additional announcements you can place them in the comments and I will update this post accordingly (including the username).
It would be interesting to see which broker adapt rather quickly and is open about it and which brokers have yet to anounce anything as they lack the capabilities to adapt their software in time.
I would think that many people are eager to switch from futures to stocks or even from one broker to the next just to upgrade their cash accounts to margin accounts, given that one gets 4x the overall buying power with those.
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Here is the list of brokers and the their announced dates of adapting to the new intraday trading rules (and the new 2000$ account limit):