Hello, tonight I was playing with the demo account on Tradezero,
I place a Limit Buy order for 100 shares of CSCO
The order got filled immediately
I than placed a Limit Sell order for 50 shares at about 15cents above the price I bought them for
The price went past my price for about 4 cents, it stayed there for maybe 15 seconds, and than came back down
but my order was never filled. Why is this?
Thanks
Nic
Hi
@737ngx .
I do not know why that should happen on a demo account, as the order does not in reality have to be filled.
But if it was an actual real market order, then this is not unusual at all.
Lets say CSCO was trading at $35.00..... and you place a limit sale for 50 @ 35,50
Here is a very simplified example of what is going on .......
The market order book will have many buyers and sellers called bids and offers:
Bids / Offers
34.95 35.00
34.96 35.05
34.98 35.25
35.00 35.35
35.10 35.50
35.50 35.60
But what also matters is how many shares are bid or offered at each price.
These bids and offers change constantly as brokers fill orders.
Now, if a bidder (or more than one) is prepared to pay your offer price or higher for 40 shares, it may well be that there are other sellers offering 40 shares that can fill the order, in which case it is just as likely if not more so, those will sell than yours. Just because the price briefly exceeds what you are asking, does not mean that your shares will sell if there are not enough buyers to fill all the orders at that price or if there were many other orders placed before yours to fill.
Your order is almost always competing with many others at or around the same price.
Depending on the volume of orders and so demand at a particular price, determines whether your order will be filled.
In reality there are likely to be many more orders and multiple brokers buying and selling at any given moment.
Thus your order may fail to sell.
Hope that helps your understanding.
