Order types

When you place a trade through a broker, you choose an order type — it controls the price you're willing to accept and when the order should fire.

Market order

"Buy or sell right now, at whatever the current price is." Executes almost immediately but you don't control the exact price — in a fast-moving or thinly-traded stock, the price you get can differ meaningfully from what you last saw quoted.

Limit order

"Buy at this price or lower" (or "sell at this price or higher"). You control the price; the trade-off is it may not execute at all if the market never reaches your limit.

Stop-loss order

Sits inactive until the price hits a trigger level, then converts into a market (or limit) order — used to cap a loss automatically without watching the screen constantly. A stop-loss triggers on the way down from your entry; the mirror version on the way up is sometimes called a take-profit.

Why this matters even though InvestSense doesn't place trades

InvestSense tracks and researches — it doesn't execute orders. But every "buy" or "sell" you eventually place happens through your broker using exactly these order types, so understanding them is part of understanding what actually happens when you act on your research.