I’ve got a Scottrade account with a standing sell order for 1000 shares at a .48 limit for one of my crappy stocks. This morning 10,000 shares sold at .53 per share; the only transaction of the day. What happened?
If the buyer wanted more then he could have picked up my 1,000 at .48 and bought another 9,000 at .53. Why wasn’t my order processed first?
No big deal, but I just don’t understand how the computer market works.
What was the closing price?
If the 10,000 shares was a single-block trade late in the day, and yours is an ordinary sell-limit order, maybe what happened is that the trade was executed and immediately upon fulfillment, the offered price to buy went back down below 48 or the market closed. Your sell limit order only becomes “active” so to speak, when the price rises and stays above 48, and it doesn’t get triggered until then. With penny stocks especially or stocks with lower volume, the market is much less liquid and perhaps the specialists handling them don’t break down blocks into teenier quantities.
Just a guess here; the vagaries of the specifics depend on details beyond my ken. If the closing price stays above 48, I think your block should sell the next time the market opens…
The buy or sell order may have been qualified as all or none.
The transaction may have been a Form T (afterhours trade) reporting from the previous day.
Transaction may have been with the market maker directly.
Many, many possible reasons your sale didn’t go through. Scottrade is pretty decent about giving explanations on why trades occurred as they did, or didn’t, as the case may be.
I’ve always been very curious about stock market mechanics.
All/none (or fill/kill which is not quite the same thing) seems plausible guess.
In principle a market maker might have grabbed your shares at 48 cents, tacked on 9000 of his own to sell at 52 cents for a possible $40 profit, right? (I suppose there are computer programs that do this automatically, but don’t waste their electrons on $40 opportunities? :dubious:)
Don’t forget the all/none qualifier! I once sold 100 shares of a cheap preferred and ended up paying double commission as 30 shares sold, then 70 shares the next day or something. (For some reason many preferreds have a 10-share lot instead of 100. Why?)