The most common type of order, and the “default” option on Bloom, is the Market Order.

A Market Order is an instant command to buy or sell a stock at the best available price 📊

Think of the stock market like one big auction.

So the best available price if you’re buying a stock is the lowest price someone else is willing to sell it at (and vice versa) 🧑‍⚖️

💡The most important thing to remember about market orders is that the price your order gets filled at MAY be different from the current stock price you see on Bloom

This is because the stock price on Bloom is the price that the LATEST order was filled at, so if a stock doesn’t get a lot of volume, its last order price can be very different from the price YOUR order gets filled at!

Popular stocks like Apple and Meta are less vulnerable to big gaps between the last order's fill price and your order's fill price, because they have tons of volume.

But placing market orders for small stocks with low volume can put you at risk of buying at a HIGHER price than you intended, or selling for a LOWER price than you intended 🎢

Imagine there is a small company called Ploom and its current stock price is $50 / share, but not a lot of people are buying or selling its stock 💰

If you place a market order to buy 1 share of Ploom, it’s possible that the best available price is $60 / share, so you would end up buying 1 share for $60, which is $10 above the stock price!

The main advantages of market orders are speed & guaranteed execution ⚡

But you don't get to control the exact price your order gets executed at...

Next, we’ll learn about a type of order that lets you control the price you buy or sell at: limit orders 🛠️