News and limit buy

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Hi!

I'm very new to spread betting - so please forgive me if my question is very basic. My question is about limit buy i.e. I want to place an order when the market is closed and capitalise on some takeover news. But I can't seem to get that order to execute when the market opens.

Take for example: I came to know on Sunday about Aegis Group selling Synovate to Ipsos Mori. So the shares must rise for Aegis group. I logged on to IGIndex Sunday night and looked at the prices. It was something like 140.3 for sell and 141.80 to buy. I tried placing a limit buy order and it would not let me place a buy order > 141.80. So I reduced a penny and placed a limit buy order for 141.79.

I got up this morning and the market opened at 151 (looking on google finance)?? The limit buy order never executed and then I had to cancel it. I've tried this on at least two other occasions and I never got thelimit buy to execute for takeover news.

How do I capitalise on some news when it happens when the market is closed?

Thanks in advance
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[BeginnerJoe]

You can't unless you know what will happen well in advance of the news release. The price gaps up at start of the day. Unless your limit order is extremely generous, it's as good as useless. As a retail player, you are too far from the action to be able to benefit from it. The best you can hope for is to get in on the price dip when people sell for a quick profit. By then, most of the profit potential is probably lost.

Rather than kicking yourself for missing out on a good thing, it would be better to accept those kind of profits are not meant for you. If it's that easy, everyone and his dog would be doing it.

If you have been following the stock for a while, the unusual moves in the price in the preceding days of the news should alert you to something is happening. If you are able to act on that with confidence, profit is possible. Even then it's not plain sailing. If you are in on it early, they will shake the crap out of you until you run away in panic.