This was a buy order, correct?
If you send out an order to buy at 174.50, THE ASK needs to get to that price to trigger.
If the ask never got to 174.50 then it makes sense why you didn’t get tagged in.
Your buy order gets executed when a seller decides to sell at your price.
Think of it from a sellers point of view: if people are buying at 175, why wouldn’t he sell at this price? Why would he deliberately undermine himself and sell at a worse price for him?
(There are reasons to do this, of course, but the general rule is a seller wants to sell at the maximum price possible, the buyer wants to buy at the lowest price possible.)
To mega simplify it:
Imagine a seller has 10 TVs that are exactly the same.
People go to his shop and buy his TVs for €100.
He sells one for €100. Then another for €100, then another for €100.
If people are willing to buy at €100, the seller doesn’t really have any reason to sell for less.
Now imagine you send him an email:
“I’ll buy one of your TVs for €80 - please call me to discuss further.”
But your phone never rings.
Of course.
He’s already doing just fine selling the TVs at €100, and he’s in no rush to sell them all now. So he has no reason to sell you one at €80.
Now let’s say he can no longer sell his TVs at €100.
People walk in and say, “nah, too expensive, the shop next door sells them for €80.”
The seller can either:
- hold out/wait and maybe demand will rise again and he’ll once again sell at €100
- or lower his price to €80 and continue selling his TVs
(If he was to only lower his price to €90, he’d have the same problem. So the seller either needs to sell at a price people are willing to buy, or hold on to the TVs until he finds buyers willing to buy at his higher price.)
So basically the market at that time agreed that the fair price to buy a TV was for €175.
But you went ahead and was put out an order to buy that €175 TV for €174.50.
So your order will sit there until a seller is willing to sell at your price.
Or until you and a seller are willing to agree on a price. (You may decide to pay more, the seller may decide to sell for less, or both.)
A long-winded way to say the stock never traded at your limit price, therefore it never triggered. (I’m assuming, based on your comment, I’ve not looked the stock up to verify.)
