Pending order

A pending order sits on the broker's server until the market reaches your chosen price, then it becomes a live position. Unlike a market order, you choose the price rather than accepting the current one, but there is no certainty it will ever be triggered.

On MetaTrader and most other platforms there are four basic pending orders:

• Buy limit: buy below the current price.
• Sell limit: sell above the current price.
• Buy stop: buy above the current price.
• Sell stop: sell below the current price.

MetaTrader 5 adds buy stop limit and sell stop limit orders, which place a limit order once a stop price is reached. Most platforms let you set an expiry, such as end of day or a specific date.

Example

Illustrative figures: EUR/USD trades at 1.0850. You think a pullback to 1.0820 would be a better entry, so you place a buy limit at 1.0820 with a stop-loss at 1.0790 and a take-profit at 1.0880. If price never falls to 1.0820, nothing happens. If it does, you are long with your exit orders already attached.

Alternatively, if you only want to buy once price breaks above 1.0880, a buy stop at 1.0885 opens the trade on the breakout.

Practical notes

• A limit order fills at your price or better; a stop order becomes a market order once triggered, so it can suffer slippage.
• Pending orders do not use margin until they trigger, but the margin must be available when they do, or the order may be rejected.
• Brokers set a minimum distance from the current price for some instruments.

See our guide to order types.