Okay, here is what I believe is going on. It's not really a case of "you can't do X". Doing "X" may caused you to get hosed, though. The issue is this: when you hold a position overnight, the margin requirement drops from 50% to 25% (30% for short positions). So, the next morning, you would have extra credit. Ex: you start with $10,000 and buy $20,000 of Dell (maxed out). You hold overnight. The next morning, you have $10,000 intraday (daytrading) buying power (your $5,000 plus broker matching). That $10,000 is not available for overnight positions. So, if you bought, say, cisco and held overnight, you would get hit with a margin call for the intraday credit you used. The issue we've been discussing is that if you did a bunch of trades and closed the day long in Dell, SEC rules consider this to be equivalent to never having closed the Dell overnight position, so you'd get whacked for whatever intraday credit you had used.
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