Lesson 11 of 12 · 5 min
Order Types — How Your Trade Gets Filled
Market, limit, stop-loss and take-profit orders — and what each one controls.
Knowing what you want to do (buy or sell) isn't enough — you also need to tell the platform how to do it. That's what order types are for.
Market order
Executes immediately at the best available price. Fast and simple, but you don't control the exact price — in a fast market you might get filled a little worse than expected (slippage).
Limit order
You set the exact price you're willing to buy or sell at. It only fills if the market reaches that price or better — you control the price, but it might never fill.
Stop order (stop-loss)
An instruction that activates only once price reaches a trigger level, usually to limit a loss.
Example
Long 1 MES at 5,800 with a stop at 5,790: if price falls to 5,790, a sell order is triggered, capping the loss around 10 points ($50), subject to slippage.
Take-profit order
The mirror image of a stop: it closes a winning position at your target automatically, so you don't have to watch every tick.
Brackets
Most futures platforms let you attach a stop and a target to every entry as a bracket. Setting both before you enter means your exits are decided while you're calm.
TradeCompass turns this into your own rules: it checks every trade against them and warns you before you break one.
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Educational content only. Not financial advice, not a buy/sell signal, no guaranteed results.