Placing an order

You want to buy ten shares. Before you confirm, look at the order book.

Forty shares are for sale at the best price. Sixty more, slightly dearer.

One hundred euros and twenty cents. That is the price the app displays.

That is not the price of the share. It is the price of the first forty, and nothing else.

Ten shares at market: one thousand and two euros. All filled by the first line.

Fast and without surprise, because ten shares fit inside forty.

Now one hundred shares. The first line only holds forty.

Ten thousand and thirty-five euros. Forty at the first price, sixty at the second.

One hundred euros and thirty-five cents on average, instead of the 100.20 displayed.

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Fifteen euros more, on a ten-thousand-euro order.

It is not a trap. That is what 'at market' means: you buy the quantity, not the price.

The limit order: you set one hundred euros twenty, and not one cent more.

Forty shares go through. The other sixty stay in the queue.

You have your price. You do not have your quantity, and sometimes you have nothing at all.

That is the underlying choice, and there is no third term: the price or the certainty.

On a large order in a thinly traded share, the limit is not an option. It is the rule.

The Paris exchange opens at nine.

And it closes at half past five.

Before the opening, orders pile up without executing. All night long.

At nine they all meet at once, and a single price settles between them.

That is why the first minutes are the most agitated of the day.

An order placed in the evening does not sleep. It waits for the open, and goes off at the worst moment.

Place it in the middle of the day, when the book is filled on both sides.

Fifteen euros on ten thousand: zero point fifteen per cent. That is the price of haste.

On a round trip, you pay it twice.

And it comes on top of the broker's fees, which at least are written down somewhere.

The book itself enters no total. You have to go and look at it yourself.

Three seconds before you confirm. That is all this chapter asks of you.