MEGATHREAD: Limit Orders

As much as I would also love to see limit orders, I am in fact asking for a stop loss order. Stop Loss vs. Stop Limit Order

Changed the category to ideas, you can vote now, thanks!

Stop loss and stop limit orders are intertwined and always exist in conjunction with each other. I donā€™t quite see the reason to have this idea in two separate topics.

If the feature will be introduced, it will certainly have bottom strike price to lock your gains by selling at the market price as soon as you hit the ā€˜no more riskingā€™ value. And it will have a top limit price to sell your holdings at a certain value or more once the market price reaches it.

Unless I misunderstand something about the concept of stop loss and limit orders, I think having them separately is not necessary. Happy to be wrong :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Your right it should be one topic, I think I just misunderstood, either way just to clarify I would like to see both stop loss and stop limit orderā€¦guess thatā€™s what I was trying to say. I was just trying to emphasise the need for both. If thereā€™s just a stop limit order at a predetermined price the stop-limit order is not guaranteed to be executed. Should the stock price rapidly decline past the stop-limit price and not recover, the order wonā€™t be executed. Thatā€™s the downside with stop limit order. So yea if thereā€™s gonna be both, I just read ā€˜Limit orderā€™ and assumed otherwise.

1 Like

Personally Iā€™d like freetrade to rethink this sort of thing anyway. Thereā€™s no need to be limited to the bizarre nomenclature and esoteric rules of existing systems. They could define a flexible set of rules that users can combine to do automated trading and expand it over time. For example sell if price goes under x within y days. It doesnā€™t have to be confusing and complex.

This could be a selling point for freetrade and something unique to them.

2 Likes

Hey Vlad,

Iā€™ve been number 1 in the queue for the last few days, have you gotten through the investor rounds yet? (I wasnā€™t in them)

That should mean youā€™ll be in the next batch to be added on Tuesday

2 Likes

Thanks Emma :+1:

1 Like

I have one more request on this: please can you make limit orders independent of any market. Use market data to define rules, and get a quote to confirm that the market still matches the rule before executing. This would free you of any arbitrary restrictions imposed by markets and allow you to build rule sets which are unique to freetrade and apply to all investments. For example HL doesnā€™t offer limit orders on US stocks or ETFs, which is annoying.

4 Likes

I think a basic, straight-forward limit order option (which can be implemented independently of other features like stop loss) is really important.

04

See that dip just after 11am? Thatā€™s my limit order on a buy succeeding today. I placed it yesterday evening (with a different broker). If Iā€™d used Freetrade, there might not even have been a dip today, and Iā€™d probably have paid around 783+ instead of 779. When youā€™re buying lots of shares, those few pennies difference in price really add up.

Iā€™ve been planning to place a really big order via Freetrade, but I donā€™t think I can until limit orders are implemented.

9 Likes

I think this would be a really useful feature to include in the app, you could set it to only work with instant orders and gain additional revenue as well.

Keep it simple and enhance to include other limit options as and when

3 Likes

Is there any news on using stops/limits?
Last I saw was a post from 2018 saying it was on the roadmap - but I canā€™t see it on the roadmap at the moment.
Trading 212 has this as well as IPOs and more stocks, so Iā€™m struggling to see why to stick with Freetradeā€¦

1 Like

Iā€™ve moved your post over to this thread, which is the place to get all of the updates about limit orders.

Theyā€™re not on the roadmap right now but weā€™re are still planning to add them in the future.

Iā€™d definitely increase my use of instant orders, which would also be FT revenue driver, if I could set limit orders.

Seems like a good fit from both a consumer/business standpoint.

3 Likes

This would be a very useful feature as then I would not have to always keep in mind when to buy /sell.

1 Like

Why havenā€™t we got this sorely needed feature?

Itā€™s a killer feature, absolutely killer!

And who knows, down the line maybe all kinds of orders, with an advanced graph, all sorts of indicators and options etc. etc. Maybe give us an option to switch between ā€˜amateur or professionalā€™ for example.

But for now, limit order please for the love of God!

10 Likes

This and a web UI are now the top voted ideas by some margin.

Unfortunately I suspect theyā€™ll both require moving to the fabled and long foretold ā€˜New Investment Platformā€™ :wink:

I do hope some of the ideas from the top of this list can be prioritised for the roadmap though, Iā€™d put them above most features on there apart from fractional shares maybe (because of the democratising effect).

5 Likes

Yes - virtually every other broker has

  • stop orders (stop loss if holding)
  • limit orders
  • fill or kill / part-fill (will be an issue as you start to take on less liquid stocks)
  • price alerts

and many have more complex things like OCO. I assume all these will come in time. As an absolute minimum limit buys should be there. They donā€™t have to be instant, if limit reached/exceeded at EOD, execute.

8 Likes

Stop losses are really for people not watching the asset every day. The idea is if it falls 5% it may well fall 10%. However, big drops only usually happen on profit warnings/earnings misses, and these are normally issued out of hours, so youā€™re not protected, ie buy a share at Ā£5, itā€™s currently down a bit, say Ā£4.80. You have a stop loss of Ā£4.50. Out-of-hours earnings report is released, a big miss on estimates, price gaps down to Ā£3.00 next morning. Your account will auto-sell the stock at Ā£3 ā€¦ not Ā£4.50.

However, some people just never look at their portfolios, so setting, say, a 15% stop loss means the bad ones (which drop a lot more than that) are caught as they fall.

2 Likes

Limit orders on basic accounts would be great and necessary for me to consider placing a greater amount of funds into the platform. I would love to know a timescale as I understand its on the roadmap?