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Comment by pazimzadeh | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I completely understand this article, but I'd like to take this opportunity to rant about my recent experience using Robinhood. Two weeks ago I noticed that Tesla stock dropped significantly after the SEC's investigation into Elon Musk's "funding secured" tweet led to Elon being ousted as chairman of the board. I thought the stock would recover from this, so I placed a market price order for TSLA shares on Sunday night (September 30th). Indeed, on Monday the stock rose +17% but lo and behold, my order never went through. The reason given was that the stock price had supposedly changed by at least 5% by the time the market opened. I suspect this is because Robinhood prioritizes orders from high speed trading firms over its own customers. Is this common practice, and can anyone recommend a service that doesn't do this? Thanks in advance.

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You sent a market order while the market was actually closed, so it could not be executed at the time. RH was protecting you from getting a fill far away from the last price, because the stock gapped up massively that Monday. 264.77 was the close on Friday, and 305.77 was the open on Monday. You should be thanking them, because otherwise your position would be around $45 under water by now. Never use market orders outside of regular trading hours; you have no idea where you are going to get filled.

It was obvious to many people that the stock price would rebound significantly after Musk settled with the SEC, so the stock had already effectively increased in price before market open. Robinhood couldn't find anyone willing to sell you shares at the market close price Monday morning because there were none to be had.

The settlement news came out earlier - Friday’s news was Musk’s punishment, which was light. But thanks for the reminder that stock prices are not numbers on an app, in my rage/greed I forgot how markets operate.

I think Robinhood implements market orders as limit %5 above/below market. You should be able to enter a limit order at your own max price, and it would've executed.

I think this is because when you do a “market order” on Robinhood it’s actually placed as a limit order 5% above the price. Just set your own limit order next time

i'll take the "never use market orders outside of market hours" and extend it to "never use market orders". specify what you're willing to pay. it should also lessen any anxiety about people paying for your order flow, as they can't make you pay more than you already decided you were happy to pay for the equity.

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