Order books, market orders, limit orders, slippage, call auctions, margin, short selling and stop-losses: see how trades actually get matched.
For: learners who can already buy and sell and want to understand how orders get filled
This course uses ideas from the courses below (optional; you can start right away).
Everyone's buy and sell orders sit in a single table. Follow the guided tour and read it line by line.
No price preference, fill it now. Submit a market order yourself and watch it "eat" through the asks level by level.
Fill only at my price or better. A limit order joins the order book queue and waits for someone to trade with.
Buying the same 2,000 shares can cost very different prices in a popular stock and a thinly traded one. Compare two order books to see why.
Step by step: borrow shares → sell → buy back → return. See how shorting profits from a fall, and why it's riskier.
Decide in advance how much you'll lose before you get out and how much you'll take when you're up. Let discipline make the call.
Before the open, the exchange collects orders without filling them, then at the bell finds the price that matches the most volume and fills everything at once. See how the opening price is "calculated".
Borrow from your broker to buy stock: you make more when it rises and lose faster when it falls. See where the price must drop to trigger a margin call.