Current Events > How does selling stocks work?

(+) Yeah! (+)

If I hit sell when a stock is at a certain value do I get that amount? Or do I get whatever its at as soon as the market opens back up? I queued a stock sell at $4.45 on Friday after market closure but now the stock dropped to $3 due to people doing after hours trading. Im a newb

A market sell order will give you whatever the prices at that exact moment/the second the market opens. Or you can do a limit sell order and pick the exact price you want it to go at

---

Please read.. there are different types of orders. You can sell now at market value but might not be what you wanted.

https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/how-stock-markets-work/types-orders

---

When you sell, you can put it as either a market order or limit order.

Market order to sell means your brokerage will sell the stock at the highest price currently offered by a buyer when your order gets processed.

Limit order has more control, in that you set your minimum price to sell. If the stock price rises to or above that level (buyers are placing orders at that price or higher), your brokerage will sell your shares automatically. So, it's useful if you have a certain price where you want to take your profits and it can sell for you without you having to watch the market price all of the time.

Market sell is best if a stock is cratering and you just want to get out fast, because you can be setting limits for lower prices but have it drop below that limit, so you cancel, set another limit, and it falls even more.

Otherwise Limit sell is generally preferred, especially if your stock doesn't have a lot of volume and you're moving a lot of shares. In those cases, you might try to sell more shares than what is looking to be bought at a price, and a market sell would drop down to the next highest bid which could be significantly less than you thought you were getting when you made the order.


---

Gamefaqs Stocks Wussies

---

Always use limit orders and set the min/max you are willing to sell/buy at.

---

tag

---

Unless you cancel the order it'll be sold tomorrow morning as soon as your broker can get the order through for whatever it's trading at when they're sold

You can place what's called a limit order. Which is essentially "I want to sell this many shares for this price or higher" and if it reaches that price they'll be sold. You can also do stop loss limit orders which will sell the shares if they fall below a certain price.

---

You buy stocks with money and it's gone

---