I have been a Financial Advisor for 12 years and a day trader for the last 3 years. I understand that the PDT rule was put in place to help limit the risk of loss for individual investors however I do not believe it accomplishes that. Most brokerage houses will allow 4X margin to be applied to a brokerage account for investing/trading. By requiring $25,000 minimum equity to be a day trader this essentially gives an individual $100K worth of buying power; this is an incredible amount of risk.