Stop order
Definition · Level 0 · Market basics
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A dormant order that becomes a market order once the stock trades at or through a trigger price; sell versions sit below the market, buy versions above. Used as a stop-loss.
Example
Long at 48, sell stop 45: if 45 trades you sell at market, maybe far below 45 on a gap.
Where Tradecraft teaches it
Level 0 · Market basics, in the lesson “Order types & time-in-force”: Market, limit, stops and their cousins: what each guarantees and exactly how each one fails.
Related terms
- AONAll-or-none: the whole quantity or nothing, but unlike fill-or-kill the order may keep working until a complete fill is available.
- FOKFill-or-kill: execute the entire quantity immediately or cancel the whole order; no partial fills.
- GapA jump between one close and the next open, or between two consecutive trades, with no trading in between, usually on overnight news; stops fill at…
- IOCImmediate-or-cancel: execute whatever quantity is available right now and cancel the unfilled remainder; partial fills allowed.
- Limit orderAn order to buy at or below, or sell at or above, a stated price: the price is protected, but it may never execute.
- Market orderAn instruction to buy or sell immediately at the best available prices: execution is near-certain, the price is not.