Order types

EN source master • P04 — Trading Foundations • needs_review.

Educational boundary: mechanisms and evidence only. No BUY/SELL/HOLD signal, trade recommendation, personalized investment advice, guaranteed setup, price target, expected profit, guaranteed win rate or guaranteed risk/reward outcome. All examples are ILLUSTRATIVE / FICTIONAL; no real money or live trade is required.

An order is an instruction with conditions. Those conditions may control eligible price, activation or lifetime, but cannot make liquidity appear. Understanding the distinction helps read execution reports and recognize gaps between a requested outcome and the actual event. No order type or real platform is recommended by this lesson.

A market order seeks execution against available eligible liquidity without an explicit limit price. It can execute at several prices and may encounter partial fills, rejection or insufficient liquidity under particular venue rules. “Market” is not a promise to execute a chosen size at the last displayed price.

A limit order sets a worst eligible price: a purchase cannot execute above its limit; a sale cannot execute below it. Eligible prices can be better. The constraint applies to execution price, not necessarily all-in cost including fees. Non-fill and partial fill remain possible. A price touching the limit does not prove an order filled; priority, order arrival and available opposing size matter.

A stop-market order remains conditional until its defined trigger occurs, then activates a market instruction. A stop-limit activates a limit instruction. These orders add another state transition. The trigger event and executable order are different things. A stop price is not a promised execution price.

Trigger conventions are venue- and product-specific: last trade, quote or another defined reference may be used. The source examples come from US securities education and rules; they do not establish identical behavior for every crypto venue. Our fictional simulator explicitly uses the last included trade. We neither connect to nor recommend a platform.

A gap can jump across a trigger. A stop-market may then execute much worse than the trigger value. A stop-limit may protect its eligible execution price yet leave the entire quantity unfilled. Unfilled quantity remains exposure in the simulation until a separate terminal instruction acts; it is not a realized zero-risk outcome.

Time-in-force and matching priority matter as well. A remaining limit quantity may persist, expire, cancel or be rejected according to defined rules. A cancel request is not necessarily a confirmed cancellation in real systems. Our fixture explicitly confirms a cancellation at its cutoff to keep the answer reproducible.

Source-to-claim scope

• Book price and size are snapshot inputs [S04-BOOK].
• Market and limit order definitions [S04-ORDERS].
• Stop-market price uncertainty and stop-limit non-execution risk [S04-STOPS].
• Trigger and resulting order are distinct; trigger context matters [S04-TRIGGERS].

The fixture's arithmetic, bucket alignment, strict swing rule, matching/trigger assumptions, journal convention and rubric are explicitly supplied teaching conventions where applicable; these references do not authenticate fictional values or endorse a venue. US securities and futures sources support bounded vocabulary and limitations, not a claim that their rules apply universally to crypto.

• Market: instruction without an explicit limit price, subject to matching rules.
• Limit: execution-price constraint.
• Stop-market / stop-limit: conditional activation of a market / limit instruction.
• Trigger: qualifying event that activates an order, not the resulting fill.
• Partial fill: some quantity executed while residual quantity remains.
• Gap: next observed reference price jumps past a level without intervening prints.

Data status: ILLUSTRATIVE / FICTIONAL. Purchase and disposal directions are exercise instructions, not financial signals. Each case resets the book; never consume case1 liquidity before case2. Prices CU/FU, quantities FU. Fees are excluded in this lesson's gross execution arithmetic and would add separate costs.

BookA asks:2 at 101,3 at 102. The ticket is quantity 4. Matching is immediate, no orders ahead, no competing changes, integer units.

1. Market 4: fills 2×101+2×102=406CU, average 101.5, residual 0.
2. Limit 4 with ceiling 101: fills 2×101=202CU, average 101, residual 2. No supplied later ask is eligible. At cutoffT2 the remainder is explicitly cancelled and confirmation is stipulated.

BookB is independent. The last trade moves from 100 atT0 to 95 atT1. A supplied disposal ticket has quantity 3 and trigger 98. Fictional rule: last trade at or below 98 activates it. AtT1 executable bids are 1 at 95 and 2 at 94. 3. Stop-market 3: activates at 95, fills 1×95+2×94=283CU, average 94⅓. The gap means no execution at 98 is shown. 4. Stop-limit 3 with floor 97: activates at 95, but neither 95 nor 94 is eligible. Filled 0, remaining 3, no average fill exists. AtT2 it expires unfilled under the supplied rule; the hypothetical holding still contains 3FU.

The gap fixture supplies both trigger prints and an executable book. A candle high/low alone would not provide that event order or queue context. Separating prints from bids/asks prevents accidental use of a trigger price as a sale price.

An unfilled order has no average execution price, not a zero price. A residual quantity requires separate state tracking. A better eligible limit price does not prove the limit type is universally preferable: fill certainty and price constraints answer different questions.

Treating last trade as best bid; calling a trigger an execution; using the limit price for unfilled quantity; forgetting to reset independent cases; adding fees into a supposedly gross average; and treating cancellation requests as confirmations all obscure the order lifecycle.

Inputs: both books, tickets and last-trade trigger rule. Tasks: draw inactive/active/partially-filled/filled/cancelled/expired states for the four cases; calculate gross fills and residual quantities; explain the gap; describe what would become unknown if arrival priority were removed.

Define side, size, price constraint, trigger basis and lifetime; separate activation from fill; reset independent cases; track residual order and holding quantities; include cost scope; and state matching uncertainty.

Orders express instructions, not guarantees. Market orders accept price uncertainty; limits accept non-fill risk; stops add a trigger stage. The correct choice for this exercise is accurate reconstruction, not a recommended order type.

P04-L05-V01 — order book

Educational question: What changes when a price constraint or trigger is added?

Dataset: FIX-P04-05; ILLUSTRATIVE; observedAt=null. Mechanism sources: S04-BOOK, S04-ORDERS, S04-STOPS, S04-TRIGGERS. Use separate reset-state panels for market 4 and limit 4@101, showing consumption and remainder; then last-price 100→95 trigger 98 with bids1@95,2@94, comparing stop-market 3 and stop-limit 3@97. Mark trigger, order activation, fills and residual exposure as different events.

Caption: Fictional order mechanisms exchange different execution risks; no order type guarantees the desired outcome.

Alt text: Market 4 fills 2@101 and 2@102 in the model; limit 4@101 fills 2 only; a gap triggers a stop but does not promise 98.

Layout: 390px stacked labels and accessible equivalent text table; 768px/tablet and desktop verification pending. RTL: RTL layout and native labels for later Arabic adaptation; isolate IDs LTR; preserve chronological direction and numerical price axes. No translation authored. Style: Dark navy with cyan, electric blue and violet; readable contrast and labels independent of color; official ZECOIN branding only. Deterministic chart/SVG/HTML; no fabricated market screenshot.

Status: SPECIFICATION_ONLY; version 1; needs_review. No rendered asset or runtime integration is claimed.

P04-L05-V02 — evidence panel

Educational question: Which conclusions follow from these inputs, and which remain unsupported?

Dataset: FIX-P04-05; ILLUSTRATIVE; observedAt=null. Mechanism sources: S04-BOOK, S04-ORDERS, S04-STOPS, S04-TRIGGERS. Bind four labelled rows OBSERVED / INFERRED / UNKNOWN / INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE to this lesson's evidence table and record locators. Include one calculation or classification and its assumptions. Display missing data and execution limits explicitly; no financial call or forecast badges.

Caption: Illustrative evidence states under the stated data and execution assumptions.

Alt text: A four-state table distinguishes supplied fictional records, conditional calculations, missing information and unsupported claims.

Layout: 390px stacked labels and accessible equivalent text table; 768px/tablet and desktop verification pending. RTL: RTL layout and native labels for later Arabic adaptation; isolate IDs LTR; preserve chronological direction and numerical price axes. No translation authored. Style: Dark navy with cyan, electric blue and violet; readable contrast and labels independent of color; official ZECOIN branding only. Deterministic chart/SVG/HTML; no fabricated market screenshot.

Status: SPECIFICATION_ONLY; version 1; needs_review. No rendered asset or runtime integration is claimed.

NONE. Use the embedded fixture, paper or an offline worksheet. No paid access, live market feed, real funds, wallet connection, account creation, signatures or trades are needed. No production tool capability is added or asserted.

• S04-BOOK — Coinbase product book: https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/api-reference/exchange-api/rest-api/products/get-product-book Supports: Bids, asks, prices and sizes in a book snapshot; fixture matching rules are original. Checked 2026-09-30; primary page inspected.
• S04-ORDERS — SEC Investor.gov Types of Orders: https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/how-stock-markets-work/types-orders Supports: Market versus limit mechanics; US securities education used for vocabulary, not universal crypto rules. Checked 2026-09-30; primary page inspected.
• S04-STOPS — FINRA Regulatory Notice 16-19: https://www.finra.org/rules-guidance/notices/16-19 Supports: Stop-market price uncertainty and stop-limit non-execution risk; US securities context. Checked 2026-09-30; primary page inspected.
• S04-TRIGGERS — FINRA Rule 5350: https://www.finra.org/rules-guidance/rulebooks/finra-rules/5350 Supports: Distinction between trigger and ensuing order; trigger definitions require context. Checked 2026-09-30; primary page inspected.

These references support mechanism definitions only. All fixture values, paths, tickets, capital, fills and calculations are original ILLUSTRATIVE / FICTIONAL teaching material, not source-observed prices, a historical performance series or a recommendation for a current market. Documentation examples and official venue names do not endorse a platform. Dataset FIX-P04-05 is bounded to the embedded records and assumptions; observedAt=null because no real-world observation was collected. Future source review and editorial acceptance remain pending: reviewStatus=needs_review, lastReviewedAt=null.

P04-L06 — Market structure. Continue within this program's learning sequence.