Trade Order Types

This is an article on the most common order types available to the MT4 platform and how to use them properly. We will examine in brief the following order types:

• Market Order (Instant Execution and Close Order)
• Stop Order (Buy Stop, Sell Stop)
• Limit Order (Buy Limit Order, Sell Limit Order)
• Standard Exits: Stop Loss and Take Profit

We will be illustrating the method and reason for using each type, along with their advantages and disadvantages.

Market Order

A market order, the most common type of order, is used when you want to execute an order immediately at the market price, which is either the displayed“bid” or “ask” price on your screen. If you are going to buy a currency pair, you will buy at the “ask” price, and if you are going to sell a currency, you will sell at the “bid” price.

Tip: All orders can be placed in a number of ways

1. You can double click or right click on a currency pair in the Market Watch window.
2. You can use Tools/New Order.
3. You can press F9
4. You can right click on the currency chart, Trading / New Order.

Usually with STP or ECN brokers, the quotes you see are streamed to you as the tradable prices (the best bid and offer) collected from 10 or more top-tier banks. If you decide to open or close a position, your order will be executed at the best price available on the market directly from the liquidity providers.

Depending on how the broker has set up their execution technology, your market order will be generated as a either an Instant Execution or Market Execution. What is the difference? An instant execution broker allows to you place the stop loss and take profit at the same time as a your market order, whereas a market execution broker has you place a market order only, without an initial stop loss and take profit. Only after the order has been executed can you go back and modify the order to include a stop loss and take profit. How can you tell them apart? When you open the market order window, you can quickly spot the distinction.

Market Order as Instant Execution:

You can see here in this window options to change the volume, that is, how many lots you want to trade (in this example, 0.01 = 1 micro lot), an option to modify the stop loss and take profit (first clue), and of course, it says Instant Execution in the Type field (second, more obvious clue). Being able to indicate your stop loss and take profit at the same time as your order can be very handy. It saves you the trouble of adding them in later, which you would have to do if you only had a market execution type broker. Other features of market orders to consider. In the above example, if you are going to buy a currency pair, you will buy at the ask (Buy) price, which you can visualize as the blue Buy box, and you can also see this price as the blue tick chart in the chart window. And if you are going to sell a currency, you will sell at the bid (Sell) price, which you can visualize as the red Sell box, and you can also see this price as the red tick chart. Notice also how you can enable maximum deviation from quoted price. If you indicated 5 pips as your desired deviation, then as much of your order as possible will be filled no more than 5 pips from the current. If the price suddenly moves more than that, the order will not be filled. The advantage here is the control of slippage and Price Certainty.

Market Order as Market Execution:

Previous, we look at how the instant execution broker gives the ability to add a stop loss or take profit alongside the market order. The advantage to that method is speed and convenience. Above is an example of a market execution broker that allows you to only place a market order, without the ability to simultaneously place a stop loss or take profit. Notice how the stop loss and take profit boxes are greyed out, meaning you can use them with the market order. Another drawback to this type of broker is that you cannot set the maximum deviation in pips from quoted price you want to execute at. The pros to this type of broker is that they are generally linked up to a STP or ECN technology that routes the order directly to the best bid/ask prices of the liquidity provider, instead of the market maker broker taking on the other side of the trade and consequently delivering less than ideal prices or execution speeds.

Pros to Market Orders (either instant or market execution)

• A market order requests immediate execution, and this is a good when you definitely want to be in the trade now, without delay.
• Because immediacy of execution is very important, market orders are the most popular form of entering trades.
• Because of the liquidity of Forex, market orders generally are filled at your quoted bid and ask prices, with minimum slippage, re-quote and error.

Cons to Market Orders

• At times a market order can and does suffer from slippage and re-quote during intensely volatile periods, such as occurring during critical news announcement. You may be re-quoted the price, not necessarily because the broker is trying to intentionally screw with you, but because the current market price may have rapidly changed since the last market snapshot.

Cool Scripts To Open Market Orders Faster:

You can take advantage of a number of scripts that can send your market order out to your MT4 faster than opening an order window box and manually inputting your desired volume, stop loss and take profit price levels. Steve Hopwood has created a buy and sell market order scripts that allow you to easily customize a few additional things to your manual market order, in addition to the convenience of easily dragging the script across to your chart window to execute the market order:

• Set lot size
• Set stop loss and take profit, as either price or pips
• Set magic number
• Set comment

Market Close: Closing Trades At Market

Closing a trade at market is the fastest way of exiting your trade without delay.
In order to do so, you need to right click on the open order from within the Terminal, and select Close Order.

The box that appears looks very much like the Instant Execution Box, but now there is a highlighted box in yellow called Close #xxxxx buy 0.04 EURJPY at 112.1000. The quoted close price is the quoted bid (sell/red) price if the open order was a buy, and it is the quoted ask (buy/blue) price if the open order was a sell. If you press this yellow bar, your ticket order will be instantly closed at the current market price. This quoted close price keeps updates every second with new prices, so you can keep it open and let prices move to where you want before you press bar.

Cool Scripts To Close Trades Faster:

You can take advantage of a number of scripts that can close your orders faster than otherwise. Drag the scripts below from the scripts folder over to the chart window to close out your trades at levels you desire.

Indicator	Descriptor
Pipsing_Close_on_Drop.mq4	Nice! Drop script close to open trade on chart (it will be seen as a horizontal green dashed line).
Close_all.mq4	Closes all trades.
CloseAtEquityAmount_v1.0_Above.mq4	Closes trades when equity > X
CloseAtEquityAmount_v1.0_Below.mq4	Closes trades when equity < X
CloseTrades_After_Account_Loss_TooMuch.mq4	Closes trades when floating loss > – X
CloseTrades_After_Account_Loss_Percent.mq4	Closes trades at a loss percent
CloseTrades_AfterAccount_Profit_Percent.mq4	Closes trades at profit percent

Pending Orders

In contrast to market orders stand the pending order, the order you want to be filled at a specified price, forward or backward from your intended direction.

There are two types of pending orders: Stop Orders and Limit Orders.

Pending stop or limit orders come in the form of entries are called pending stop entry order or pending stop limit order. Stop entry orders are orders to be filled forward of your intended price direction (to confirm price direction), and limit entry orders are orders to be filled backward in temporary retracement of your intended price direction (to enter at better price).

Stop and Limit Orders can come in the form as exits as well. The common exit, Stop Loss, is a pending stop order, while Take Profit is a pending limit order. We will examine these after covering the pending entry orders.

Stop Entry Orders

A stop order is an order to buy or sell a currency when its price surpasses a particular point, in order to ensure a greater probability of achieving a predetermined entry or exit price. Once the price surpasses the predefined entry/exit point, the stop order becomes a market order.

• A buy-stop order is a pending buy order to buy the currency pair at a specified higher price.
• A sell-stop order is a pending sell order to sell the currency pair at a specified lower price.

Below is an example of a buy stop order being entered in MT4:

Here in this example I am indicating in the Type field that it is a Pending Order, instead of an Instant Execution, and now there are field parameters for the Pending Order, such as Type (in example I indicated Buy Stop), at price (in example I have set to 1.2838), and expiry (I don’t indicate an expiry but it is handy to use if I don’t want to have a buy stop last forever). In the tick chart to the left, my designated buy stop entry point appears as a grey line 10 pips above the current bid (blue) quote price. The market reaches up to that price I am filled with 0.01 micro lots.

Stop orders are a good method to use for trading breakouts. For instance, using the example above, I have placed the EURUSD buy stop order of 1.2838 just above the last high of the market because I am thinking that if it breaks this resistance level, it can continue to trade higher, and I want to be in on this trade at the breaking point.

Pros:

• Making sure you are in on the trade when it is moving in your anticipated direction
• Good for catching breakouts

Cons:

• Because the market has to move a ways up or down before you enter the position, there is the risk of you entering at the end of a run or exhaustion point
• There are a number of traders who like to fade breakouts, meaning that they put limit orders in the opposite direction to your stop orders, hoping the resistance and support holds instead of breaks

Limit Entry Orders

A limit order is placed when you are only willing to enter a new position or to exit a current position at a specific price or better. The limit order, resting below the market for a buy, or above for a sell, will only be filled if the market trades at that price or better.

• A limit-buy order is a pending order to buy the currency pair at a specified lower price.
• A limit-sell order is a pending order to sell the currency pair at a specified higher price.

Below is an example of a limit-buy order in MT4:

I have set Buy Limit order of 1.2858, 7 pips below the current market buy price of 1.2866. I hope the market creeps a little down before I am filled in order to get a 7 pip advantage on the upward move. If I wanted to short the trade, I could have sell limit set anywhere above the quoted sell price to take advantage of a better price on a downward move.

Pros:

• Good for getting filled at better prices than market or stop orders.
• Good for fading the breakouts

Cons:

• Missed opportunity: Sometimes the price does not reach up or down to your limit order, and you miss the ride when the market travels strongly in favor of your intended direction.
• Putting your sell or buy limit at a level of resistance or support can meet with problems when those levels break. You would thus be entering in a position when market trend is moving against you.

Cool Scripts To Enter Pending Entry Orders Faster:

Most pending entry orders are opened via the order window in a 5 step process:

1. Open New Order window
2. Select Type: Pending Order
3. Select Type: Buy Limit, Sell Limit, Buy Stop, Sell Stop
4. Select Specific Price
5. Place Order

This process can take a few seconds, but thankfully there are scripts that can order pending orders faster.

I have run across a cool script that can enter your stop entry or limit entry orders much faster than the standard way. You just drag the script below from the scripts folder over to the chart above or below the current price, depending if you want pending type you want it to be:

Indicator	Descriptor
DROP_PENDING_BUY	Drop over price for a buy stop, under price for a buy limit
DROP_PENDING_SELL	Drop under price for a sell stop, over price for a sell limit
DROP_MOVE_PENDING_PRICE	Drop over/under price to move stop/limit to that point

Standard Exits: Stop Loss And Take Profit

The stop loss and take profit are the two most common forms of pending exits and they are usually built into most trading platforms as customizable inputs.

Unfortunately the order window box of MT4 displays stop loss and take profit as customizable price levels (not pips). Even when you want to modify an existing sl or tp, it has to be done by price (not pips). Moreover, it takes at least a few steps to enter and modify sl and tp, which can be seconds too slow in a fast moving market.

Fortunately, there are scripts to get a different ways of adding sl or tp (as price and pips and mouse drops) and adjusting them existing levels on the fly, by double clicking on the sl or tp horizontal lines and dragging them up or down.

Stop Loss: Using Stop Orders For Exiting Trades

Stop orders are commonly used to limit losses. One of the most effective ways of limiting your losses is through a pre-determined stop order, commonly called a stop-loss.

Below is an example of a buy stop order being used in conjunction with a stop loss.

As you can see, I have a Buy Stop Order at the price of 1.2837, just above the last high, and it appears as a grey line on the tick chart, 4 pips above the current buy price. I have also indicated a stop loss of 1.2827, which appears as a red line on the tick chart, 10 pips below my buy stop order. Thus, if the market moves up and fills me at 1.2837, my stop loss will be active at 1.2827, and I will not lose more than 10 pips on that trade.

If your trade becomes profitable by a certain number of pips, it is generally a good idea to move your stop loss in the profitable direction in order to protect some of your profit. On a profitable long position you can move your stop to the breakeven or profit zone, in order to safeguard it against the chance of a market reversal against your currently profitable position. Determining the profit threshold for when you should move your stop loss to protect your position or profit is the tricky part, because you also want to allow your trade to have room to breathe, to be free to fly instead of prematurely exiting on an insignificant correction.

Take Profit: Limit Orders For Exiting Trades

Just as it is a good idea to have a stop loss order in place before placing your trade, it is an equally good idea to have a profit target in place. A limit order allows you to exit the market at your pre-set profit objective, called a Take Profit.

As you can see, I have Buy Limit order set at the price of 1.2873, appearing as a grey line (with Entry on it) 3 pips below the current buy quote. I have also put a predefined Stop Loss of 1.2871, appearing as red line (with SL on it), 2 pips below my intended entry, and a Take profit of 1.2878, appearing as a blue line (with TP on it). Of course, one would not likely have the entry limit, stops and targets set so close together, I am crowding them in order to show you how they would appear on the tick chart.

Cool Indicators To Enter And Modify Stop Loss And Take Profit Faster:

Adding or modifying a stop loss or take profit in MT4 can take a few steps and seconds. Moreover, all modifications are done from price alone, which can add to the delay as one tries to scroll to the specific price. Thankfully there are scripts that you can run to enter or modify your stop loss or take profit orders much faster, in multiple ways: as price, pips and horizontal drag/drop price.

Indicator	Descriptor
Market long by Steve.mq4	Create long market order, and set sl & tp as either price or pips; also can add magic number and comment
Market short by Steve.mq4	Create short market order, and set sl & tp as either price or pips; also can add magic number and comment
modify_stops_DragDrop.mq4	Add & modify stops to drop area of chart
modify_take_profits_DragDrop.mq4	Add & modify take profit to drop area of chart
e-MoveSLTPbyMouse.mq4	Modify existing sl & tp by double clicking & dragging sl & tp horizontal lines
Remove stop losses.mq4	Removes all stops of all existing and pending trades

Conclusion

Once you know the different types of orders (market, stop, limit), and become comfortable using them, you can better fulfill your intentions of how to best enter and exit the trade. There are pros and cons to each order type and these can only be learned through practice. Knowing the order type is only the how, it does not help with the where and when – which would be up to your analysis or strategy to determine. In the end you might prefer one type of execution over the others, or you might employ a flexible combination of order types relative to the market conditions.