Hacker News Reader

Comment by FartyMcFarter | Hacker News Reader

> assuming you used a market order, which you never should).

Yeah I don't get why market orders even exist. If you're doing something that usually costs thousands to millions, is it ever a meaningful benefit to saving a click or two and a few keystrokes?

If my broker had an option to remove my ability to do market orders (sell or buy) I would immediately enable that.

View on HN

I have traded literally several million of dollars (especially counting all the tax loss harvesting I’ve done) over the years as a private investors in highly liquid index funds, and always use market orders. I don’t think I’ve ever been shortchanged...

I'm not a high frequency trader. When I want to sell (all highly liquid shares), I've made that decision on other factors than a 0.1% variation of the listed stock price.

What I care about is that it sells.

It's hold-over from the dotcom days when I saw colleagues sell options with a limit order just above the current listed price that never got fulfilled in an a constant down market.

Would it still be called a market order if you were denominating the order in dollars-converted-at-moment-of-sale? I.e. "buy however many shares I would get for $500, I don't care how many or few that is at the time." That seems more useful, and still caps your losses, while offering something limit orders don't.

This is still a market order (ignoring rounding).

> Yeah I don't get why market orders even exist.

Have you ever needed to exit a trade in a hurry? Or been buying something on the way up?

A marketable limit order is strictly better: "I'll sell at the best price available, but no more than X% worse than the current price" vs. "I'll sell at literally any price". In most cases, they give identical results, except in certain catastrophic cases where the limit order will save you (e.g., flash crash).

If you do a limit order that is higher than the current market order, you stand a pretty decent chance of executing at that price rather than at the more beneficial market price.

Market order just means sell it at what it's worth right now.

I’m sure there may be “failures” sometimes, but shouldn’t in principle the transaction be done at the NBBO?

I only use market orders. I generally intend to hold a stock for at least a few years when I buy it. What advantage do limit orders offer me?

Protection from events like flash crashes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com