Market and limit orders
A market order buys at whatever the price is now; a limit order only buys at the price you name, or better.
Market orders fill immediately but you take the price you get, which in a thin or fast-moving market can be worse than the one you saw. Limit orders protect the price but may never fill at all.
The trade-off is certainty of price against certainty of execution, and you cannot have both.
In Stoxhatch
Trades fill at the live quote, like a market order. The card re-quotes and asks you to confirm again if the price drifts while you are deciding.
Related
- Quote — A quote is the current price of a stock: what buyers are offering, what sellers are asking, and what the last trade went through at.
- Extended hours — Extended hours are the stretches before and after the 9:30am–4:00pm ET session when stocks still trade, but with far fewer buyers and sellers.
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