THE 6 MOST USED ORDER TYPES FOR TRADING IN THE STOCK MARKET.
Online trading, not only allows you to buy or sell shares according to your convenience but offers advanced interfaces and the ability for you as an investor to see how your money is performing throughout the day. You can use your mobile phone or your computer to access your funded brokerage account, using your preferred trading platform.
Before starting to trade, you should be aware of the various order types that you can use to buy or sell the stocks. There are many types in the market that are commonly used by traders or investors:
1. Market Order–Market orders are the simplest to place orders of buying or selling security immediately at the current market price. A Market Order is best used when you really want to buy or sell as fast as possible with the best price available in the market. Market Orders get executed almost immediately.
2. Limit Order– Unlike a Market Order, a Limit Order is an order where you as a trader can set a price to buy or sell a security. For example, if you place a Limit Order to buy shares at Rs. 85 per share, these will be bought at Rs. 85. If you place a Limit Order to sell shares at Rs. 85 per share, these will be sold at Rs. 85. A Limit Order can be used during high volatility to avoid buying or selling a stock at a price that you are comfortable with.
3. Stop-loss Order – To avoid losses from being unlimited to limited, you can lower your losses by exiting a trade once the share reaches a certain price. A Stop-loss is always placed below the market price so that your losses can be limited if the stock price goes down too much. For instance, if a trader places a buy order at:
Share Price = Rs. 300
Stop Loss = Rs. 295
As soon as the price falls below Rs. 300- the order will be executed if the stock price goes below the Stop-loss price of Rs. 295. Similarly, if you place a Sell Order, you can put a Stop-loss higher than the selling price. For example – If you have a Sell Order at Rs. 300 you can put a Stop-loss at Rs. 305. When the Stop Price is reached, a Stop Order becomes a Market Order.
4. Bracket Orders (BO) – Bracket Orders are the special 3-in-1 type of intra-day orders. It allows you to place 3 orders simultaneously in one go. The three types of orders are such that the parent order is placed with two cover orders of the same quantity i.e. Book Profit/Exit Order and Stop-loss order.
For example, if you want to buy 100 shares of one company at Rs. 200 per share, with a Target Price of Rs. 220 and Stop- loss of Rs. 190; you can enter into a bracket order where you put all these orders simultaneously in one click. First, the buy order gets executed while the other order remains valid during the day. Whenever the Target Order gets executed, the pending Stop-loss order gets canceled and vice versa.
5. Trailing Stop Loss –A Trailing Stop Loss is similar to a Stop-Loss as it protects against both profit and loss. A Trailing Stop Loss trails the price of the stock as it increases, and triggers if the price goes against them. Also, it works along with Bracket Order and not individually. For Example, if you buy a Stock @100 and put your Trail Stop Loss @95 keeping the trail to increase Stop Loss to revise by Re. 1 in case stock moves by Rs. 2.
a. Like, if your stock moves from 100 to 102, Trailing Stop Loss will change from 95 to 96 (as per condition)
b. But Trailing Stop Loss will remain static if your stock moves from 100 to 98.
6. Immediate Or Cancel order (IOC) – An Immediate or Cancel Order (IOC) is an order to buy or sell a security that executes all or part immediately and cancels any unfilled portion of the order. Investors can typically use IOC orders when submitting a large order to avoid having it filled at an array of prices. Those who trade several stocks throughout the day may use an IOC order to minimize the risk of forgetting to cancel an order at the close manually.
With various choices of trade orders, you as a trader can enter into various types of orders to buy or sell stocks more effectively.