Wise Stock Trades

When you place market order, you're essentially telling a brokerage to get or sell a stock at the existing market price. Market order may be the way your broker normally places an order if you don't give her or him different instructions. The benefit of market order is that you will be more often than not guaranteed your order is executed provided that willing buyers and sellers come in the marketplace place.

Generally speaking, buy orders are filled at the ask price and sell orders are filled at the bid price. If, however, you're working with a brokerage who includes a smart order routing system, which searches for the very best bid you sometimes will get an improved price on the NASDAQ or AMEX exchanges. Whenever the order involves the NYSE, you will need a good floor broker. Generally in most brokerage houses, market orders will be the cheapest to put with the cheapest commission level.

If you need to avoid selling or buying stock at a cost higher or less than you intend, you need to place a limit order rather than market order. When placing a limit order, you specify the purchase price at which you'll buy or sell. It is possible to place the buy limit order or perhaps a sell limit order. Buy limit orders could be executed only once the cost of the stock you're buying reaches the limit price or lower. A sell limit order could be executed only once the value reaches the limit price or more. Put simply, you set the parameters for the purchase price that you'll accept. You can't do this with market order. The chance you take when placing a limit order is that the order may never be filled. Most firms charge more for executing a limit order than they do for market order. Make sure that you realize the fee and commission structures in the event that you plan to use limit orders.