Snap Ticket - TD Ameritrade

[THAY3R]

I'm trying to purchase ~3k worth of stock, and I am using Market. For example the bid is listed at 60 and an ask of like 4000. I don't want to spend 200k on this stock... That's not going to happen right?

[blendedsuit]

why use market orders? market and limit orders are both $9.95 at ameritrade.

[blendedsuit]

whats the stock? i'll put in a sell order and you can buy the shares from me.

[hawk59]

why don't you use a limit order to make sure it doesn't happen?

[THAY3R]

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why use market orders? market and limit orders are both $9.95 at ameritrade.

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They're free for me right now... I think.

[NoTalent]

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whats the stock? i'll put in a sell order and you can buy the shares from me.

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lol [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[DesertCat]

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For example the bid is listed at 60 and an ask of like 4000.

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Why do you want to buy a stock that's going to cost you $4000 a share, when you know you won't be able to sell it for more than $60 per share?

If you hate money that bad, why not just transfer it to me and I'll give you a 50% share of all my WSOP winnings

[THAY3R]

Well it turns out I bought it at 60. I'm still not sure what the 4k was all about. I know I had it set to buy at the opening of the day..

[leto333]

you were seeing premarket quotes, the marketmaker basically "no-bids" the price, that is sets it so high that there will be no takers, so he is conforming to the requirements of his market making position but he can go have a coffee and chat up some hottie before the bell.

Theoritically, yea, if you put in a market order and you had enough in your account to swing the order and the market was 4k per share, and your broker was having a really bad day and wanted to kick someone else in the balls to make himself feel better, then yea, you could buy 200k worth of stock that is actually worth closer to 3k on the open market. Realistically, no, the market maker would get taken out by arbritragers in seconds if he left that kind of spread during open market hours.


I was once filled for more than the allowable amount of margin on a trade, I had 4k cash in account and the margin was 5k to fill the order (9k total), it was due to slippage in a crazy bull market in 1998. Fortunately I was able to sell at an incredible profit, but it opened my eyes to the fact that I was the only one who was going to be held accountable (read lose money) if I didnt enter my orders properly and did not account for slippage in fast markets.

[THAY3R]

So in the future, what exactly should I do when I want to buy a stock?

I'm kind of new to this.