Struggling with market order

Does anyone know the reason why market order for BCN ā€œcanā€™tā€ go through and it is only processing all the time?

@Ashige We can confirm that the order has passed through, why itā€™s not executed - we still donā€™t know. Itā€™s entirely possible that the stock suffers from extremely low liquidity.

@David thank you I wonder how its gonna look like at the market close would prefer shares to be allocated

How many shares should be traded for stock to have good enough liquidity for market order to have good chance to be executed? Asking from simple curiosity. Placing same order everyday was planing to invest something more but is there a point to do so if orders are not filled?

@David any reason why market order was not executed this time as well? Made similar order with other broker so that cannot be liquidity issue, really would like to have all positions with same broker rather with many

@Ashige
Most shares trade on SETS which stands for the Stock Exchange Electronic Trading Service,
the London Stock Exchangeā€™s digital order book. SETS facilitates most of the
orders on the LSE. SETS qx (where BCN is traded), or Stock Exchange Electronic
Trading Service ā€“ quotes and crosses, is a variant of SETS that is used for
securities that arenā€™t liquid enough for SETS.

There are auctions that are scheduled to take place at 8 am, 9 am, 11 am, 2 pm and 4:35 pm. For some stocks, there are market makers who will offer prices on a fixed bid/offer spread while the market is open.

Usually, if thereā€™s enough demand/liquidity, the orders would go through the auction. It appears that hasnā€™t been the case recently. Iā€™m guessing that the broker you made the order with either internalized the trade (off-book) or traded with a market maker. Trading with a market maker is a manual process which may involve phone calls or manual electronic call. Both of these would
necessitate some discretion on the part of the broker ā€“ whether to accept a price whereas executing an order in an auction period means there is no market spread and buyers and sellers should receive the same price.

Weā€™ll look at what we can do to improve this though.

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Is it a case then to get the price Iā€™m wanting to buy at with a volatile stock I should be hitting the buy at 8:59am, 10:59am, 1:59pm, 4:34pm or does it need more than a minute to queue the order? like do it 5mins before to be safe.

9 am, 11 am, 2 pm and 4:35 pm

Re the 8am does that mean I will get the opening price if I place out of hours?

So if it finished on p10 the previous day and I had a feeling that good news was about to drop. so at 7:50am I place a market order, and it jumps to p20 starting at 8am will it actually execute the market order?

@phildawson Iā€™d guess that the orders donā€™t need more than a minute to get accepted. However, those auctions donā€™t guarantee that thereā€™ll be enough demand on both sides.

As for the out of hours market order - yes, I think itā€™ll be executed at whatever price we see during market open.

Thanks.

Is there something that can be added to the stocks buy screen for those that donā€™t immediately buy? Thereā€™s nothing to suggest that when you click buy that its going to not buy until those auction times, or that it might not even go through at those times.

Even if it just had a little icon next to it to indicate, or the 8am, 9am , 11am, 2pm and 4:35pm displayed on the page to avoid other people slipping up.

I also noticed that after buying, it had ā€˜processingā€™ for a long time after where I couldnā€™t cancel etc. Is that a processing fixed time or based on something?

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@phildawson Weā€™ll think of something to highlight the more illiquid stocks.

Did you place the processing order during open markets?

Yeah so in the open market I went to do a normal market buy and on the pending orders tab it had the word ā€œprocessingā€ on the right hand side in the place where you can normally cancel using the X next to the order. It stuck around forever, so I was unable to cancel or do anything with funds until it finally changed to an X.