Welcome to Questrade.
In this video, we'll show you how to place your first trade using a market and limit order.
To get started, simply log in to your Questrade account
and go to the trading area.
Once you're in the trading area, use the symbol look up tool in the top right corner to find the stock or ETF you're interested in.
Stocks displayed are for illustrative purposes only.
When you click on the symbol, a price chart and other key information about the stock will appear.
On the right side of the chart, click the green buy button. An order entry window will appear in the box to the right of the buy button.
This is where you will enter your order. It will begin by asking you to select which of your self-directed accounts you'd like to purchase this stock or ETF in.
You'll then be given the choice of placing a limit order or a market order.
Please note that if you're interested in placing other types of orders, such as stop orders, bracket orders, or trailing stop orders,
you'll need to upgrade your trading platform to Questrade Edge.To do so, click on the more order types link.
For this example, we'll start by placing a market order.
A market order is an order to buy or sell a stock at the best available price in the current market.
They're considered to be the simplest type of order.
If you use a market order to buy a stock, you'll pay the stock's current ask price, or very close to it as it's the lowest price sellers are currently accepting.
If you use a a market order to sell a stock,
you'll receive the bid price, or very close to it as it's the highest price buyers are currently accepting.
In the order entry section,
when you choose to place a market order, you'll see the ask price at the top and be given the choice of how many shares you'd like to buy.
Below that, you'll see the estimated cost of the order,
the account that these shares will be held in,
your current cash available to use,
and how many shared you already own in the stock or ETF.
To calculate how many shares you can afford to purchase, simply divide the amount of cash you have available by the stock's ask price.
Please note that because Apple is traded on the NASDAQ, an American stock exchange, its shares will be bought and sold in USD.
You can see which exchange a stock is traded on on the top left corner above its price chart.
In this example, we'll purchase ten shares of Apple.
Click the next button, and you'll receive an overview of your order before it's officially confirmed.
This will provide a summary of details such as order duration,
which account you're trading in,
and the total estimated cost of your order, including any commission fees.
Please note that the duration isn't relevant for a market order, but it will be important when making a limit order, which we'll talk about shortly.
Once you click place order, you should receive confirmation that your order was filled or completed very shortly.
With a market order, it will usually fill almost instantly.
Let's go through another example. This time, trading an exchange traded fund. Also known in short as an ETF.
For this example, we'll search for SPY in our symbol look up box.
SPY is an ETF that tracks the price of the S and P 500 index in the US.
Remember, this is just an illustrative example for educational purposes,
and there are a wide variety of different ETF types that track popular benchmarks, indexes, and investing strategies.
This is not a recommendation to purchase SPY or any other ETF.
Now let's review how you can buy an ETF using a limit order as an example, which allows you to set the price you'd like to buy or sell a stock at.
When using a limit order, you'll start by entering how many shares you'd like to buy.
For this example, let's purchase one share of SPY.
Next, you'll choose how much you'd like to pay per share.
Please note that your order may not complete or fill if what you're buying doesn't reach your price target.
In this example, SPY's ask price is around four hundred and thirty dollars.
If you put in a limit order to buy that's the same or higher than the ask, you'll pay the ask price.
But if you input an order that's lower than the ask price, such as four hundred and fifteen dollars,
your order may not fill unless the ask price drops and reaches your limit price.
To keep things simple, we'll use a limit price that's very close to the ask price so that the order will be more likely to fill quickly.
After filling in your desired price, you'll be taken to a confirmation screen to review your order.
This screen will ask you to choose your order duration. The duration of the order will determine how long your order is active for.
A day order is valid from the time the order is entered until the end of regular trading hours on that day.
If the ask price does not reach your limit price by four PM, the limit order will automatically cancel
and you will have to re-enter it on the next trading day.
If you'd like your order to stay active longer, you can use the until cancelled option.
This allows the order to be in effect for up to ninety days, or until you cancel it.
This can be useful if you think the stock price will reach your limit price in the next few days or even weeks.
Great, we just received confirmation that our limit order has been filled.
We hope you enjoyed this walkthrough of placing market and limit orders.
For more information about our trading platform, please check out the other videos on our YouTube channel.