Speaking in orders — buy, sell, stop, take
The four verbs you'll use every trading day, and how to place each one without thinking. Plus what stop-loss really does — and what it can't.
Last reviewed:
Orders in 90 seconds
Four verbs: Buy, Sell, Stop (loss), Take (profit). Two families: Market (now) and Pending (when price gets there).
- Market order = execute now at current bid/ask. Pending = wait until price reaches a level, then execute.
- Four pending types: Buy Limit (buy lower than current), Sell Limit (sell higher), Buy Stop (buy higher — breakout), Sell Stop (sell lower — breakdown).
- Stop-loss closes a losing position automatically at a price you choose. Take-profit closes a winner at a price you choose. Always set both before walking away.
- SLs are NOT guaranteed during news or weekend gaps; they can fill worse than the chosen price. But they still catch ~99 % of normal moves — that's why every professional uses them.
- Order ticket in MT5: press F9 → choose Market/Pending → set volume (start at 0.01) → optionally SL and TP → click.
Two SNB moments tell you the full story of what SLs can and can't do:
Modern counterpoint to the 2015 de-peg: a calm, telegraphed move. Same currency, very different execution.
SourceOrder-type chooser
Answer two or three questions and the tree tells you which order type to use. Then test yourself against four real scenarios.
Test yourself — four scenarios
Pick the right order type for each. Click 'Show answer' to verify.
EURUSD is at 1.0875 in a clear uptrend. Support sits at 1.0860. You expect price to dip to that support and resume. What do you place?
GBPUSD is at 1.2700 with resistance at 1.2720 that has held twice. You want to enter only if price breaks above 1.2722.
USDJPY is at 148.20 and a Fed speaker just confirmed a hawkish tilt. You want to be long immediately, no waiting.
AUDUSD is at 0.6555, having bounced sharply off Asian-session lows. You think the bounce will fail near 0.6580 (where prior resistance lies) and you want to short into that level if it gets there.
How orders actually work
Market vs Pending — the only fork that matters at the top
Every order you'll ever place is one of two things. A market order says 'execute at the next available price'. A pending order says 'wait until price reaches this number, then execute'. That's the entire fork. Everything else — limits, stops, SL, TP, partial fills — is detail underneath.
Market orders are the simpler choice for beginners. You see a setup, you click Buy or Sell, you're in. The trade-off: you pay the spread immediately (the ask if buying, the bid if selling), and you don't get a chance to wait for a better price. Pending orders flip that: you choose a price, and MT5 quietly watches the market. When price touches your level, the order fires. You may get a better fill — or, if price never gets there, the order simply expires.
The four pending types, decoded once
MT5 (and every other platform) calls the pending types Buy Limit, Sell Limit, Buy Stop, Sell Stop. The names are slightly counter-intuitive on first read, but the rule is simple:
Limit orders trigger when price moves *into* your target — you're waiting for a better-than-current price. Stop orders trigger when price moves *through* your level in the same direction you want to go — you're waiting for confirmation, like a breakout. Combine that with buy/sell and you get all four: Buy Limit (buy on a dip), Sell Limit (sell on a bounce), Buy Stop (buy on a breakout up), Sell Stop (sell on a breakdown).
If 'limit = better price' and 'stop = breakout' don't stick, the widget below will resolve it through scenarios in under a minute. The chooser is a decision tree: pick what you want to happen and it tells you the order type.
Stop-loss and take-profit — the autopilot for exits
Once you're in a trade, two prices matter: the price at which you'll close a loser (SL) and the price at which you'll close a winner (TP). MT5 lets you attach both to any order — either at placement, or after, by right-clicking the open position and modifying.
Why this is non-negotiable: humans are bad at exiting losing trades. The cognitive load of 'should I close now or wait for a bounce' is exactly the kind of decision that goes wrong under pressure. Attaching an SL at the moment you enter — when you're calm, before you have skin in the game — outsources that decision to the platform. The next time the trade goes against you, you don't have to think; MT5 closes it at your pre-decided level.
TPs do the symmetric job for winners. They prevent the equally common mistake of holding too long and watching profit evaporate. Together, SL and TP let you walk away from a trade with predetermined risk and predetermined reward. That's the foundation of every risk model we'll build in Lesson 9.
What SLs can't do — the honest part
SLs are not guaranteed. In two specific situations they can fill worse than the price you chose: (1) weekend gaps — markets reopen Sunday evening UTC at a price possibly far from Friday's close; your SL fills at the new opening price, not the gap-skipped level; (2) news spikes — when a central bank surprises (rates, intervention), price can move 50 pips in seconds, with no liquidity at intermediate levels. Your SL still triggers — it just fills wherever the next available bid/ask is.
This is not a reason to skip the SL. It's a reason to know your risk in normal conditions and have a plan for the abnormal ones (sit out major news, size down before weekends, use 'guaranteed stop-loss' orders on brokers that offer them — for a small premium). Lesson 9 covers the discipline side of this in detail. For now: always set the SL, and accept that in extreme moments it gives you a best-effort, not a guarantee.
Key terms
The four pending orders, one rule each
Pending orders confuse beginners because there are four names that look similar. There's a clean rule that resolves the confusion in one sentence — and once you've internalised it, you never look it up again.
You want to buy *cheaper* than the current price — waiting for a pullback.
EURUSD at 1.0875. Place Buy Limit at 1.0860. Fires only if price falls to 1.0860.
You want to sell *higher* than the current price — waiting for a bounce.
EURUSD at 1.0875. Place Sell Limit at 1.0890. Fires only if price rises to 1.0890.
You want to buy *higher* — only if price breaks out upward through your level.
EURUSD at 1.0875, resistance at 1.0900. Place Buy Stop at 1.0902. Fires only if price breaks out and trades 1.0902.
You want to sell *lower* — only if price breaks down through your level.
EURUSD at 1.0875, support at 1.0850. Place Sell Stop at 1.0848. Fires only if price breaks down and trades 1.0848.
What SLs can — and can't — protect against
Two stories about Switzerland tell you everything about what SLs can and can't do. We start with the famous one:
Historical callback: CHF gapped 30 % in seconds, blowing through every stop. Cited in L4 to explain why SLs are *not* guaranteed.
On January 15, 2015, the Swiss National Bank abandoned its 1.20 floor on EUR/CHF without warning. CHF gapped roughly 30 % stronger in seconds. Every SL in the market triggered — but most filled at the new price, 1,000+ pips worse than where they were set. Many retail traders ended the day with negative balances. Nine years later, in March 2024, the SNB cut rates first among G10 central banks. The move was telegraphed, expected, calm — CHF moved a normal amount, SLs filled at their set prices, no one had a special story to tell. Same currency, same regulator, very different execution. The lesson isn't 'don't trade CHF'. The lesson is: SLs work for normal markets — which is 99.9 % of the time — and you handle the 0.1 % by sitting out telegraphed news and sizing down before weekends. That's it. The SL stays on.
SourcePractice — place one of each on demo
10-minute practice — place one of each
Open your MT5 demo. We'll walk through placing every order type so the muscle memory locks in before this lesson ends.
- 1
EURUSD chart, H1. Press F9 — the order ticket opens. Set Type = Market Execution, Volume = 0.01, click Buy. You're in at the current ask. Note the price.
- 2
Right-click the open position in Toolbox → Trade. Modify or Delete Order → set a Stop Loss 20 pips below entry and a Take Profit 30 pips above. Click Modify. Watch the SL and TP appear as lines on the chart.
- 3
F9 again. This time Type = Pending Order. Buy Limit. Price = current price minus 10 pips. Volume = 0.01. Click Place. The pending order sits in Toolbox → Trade with status 'Pending'.
- 4
F9 once more. Sell Limit at current price plus 10 pips. Place it. You now have an active position + two pending orders. Right-click any pending → Delete to cancel — useful when a setup invalidates.
- 5
Close the active position (right-click → Close). Cancel the pendings. That's the full lifecycle. Total time: under five minutes once it's muscle memory.
Mastery check
Six questions on order types and stop-loss behaviour. Pass at 5 of 6.
Speaking in orders — quick check
Test your understanding with 6 questions. Pass with 5/6 correct.
Reflect
Reflection
Type your honest answers — saved on this device only. Use them next week to spot patterns in your trading thinking.
Pro deep dive — under the order ticket
If you're already comfortable with order types and want the layer underneath, here's what's actually happening inside MT5.
What MT5 sends to the broker
When you click Buy in MT5, the client serialises an OrderSendRequest message (type, symbol, volume, optional SL/TP, optional comment, magic number) and dispatches it to the broker's trade server. The server validates against current bid/ask, account margin, and any broker-specific rules, then either executes against an upstream liquidity provider (A-book), takes the other side itself (B-book), or rejects. The reply — fill price, ticket number, server timestamp — comes back within typically 50–200 ms on a healthy connection. Every step is visible in Toolbox → Journal.
Why fills slip in fast markets
Slippage is structural, not malicious. A market order specifies what you want (buy 0.01 lot EURUSD now) but not at what price. In normal conditions the broker's upstream liquidity stack has continuous depth, so your fill is at or one tick from the displayed ask. In fast markets (news, gaps, central bank prints), the displayed price changes faster than the round-trip time of your order — by the time your request arrives at the server, the best available price has moved. Your order still fills, but at the new price. The same mechanism is why SLs slip during news: the platform converts the SL to a market order when triggered, and that market order behaves like any other under stress.
Guaranteed stops, and when they're worth it
A handful of regulated brokers offer 'guaranteed stop-loss orders' (GSLO) — for a per-trade premium (often 0.2–1 pip), the broker promises the SL fills at exactly your set price, even through a gap. Worth it for: positions held over weekends, leveraged exposure into a known central-bank decision, large size on illiquid pairs. Not worth it for: small positions on majors during normal hours. Read the small print — every broker structures their GSLO differently, and some only honour them up to a maximum slippage.
Magic numbers and order comments — the underrated MT5 feature
MT5 lets you tag each order with a numeric 'magic number' and a free-text 'comment'. Manual traders ignore them; algo traders rely on them. The magic number identifies which EA (or which sub-strategy of an EA) opened the order — making it possible to attach multiple EAs to one chart without them interfering. The comment is for human notes. If you ever start writing your own EAs, this is one of the first things you'll appreciate; for now, leave them as defaults.
Bibliography
Show answer
The four pendings are Buy Limit (buy lower than current), Sell Limit (sell higher), Buy Stop (buy on breakout up), and Sell Stop (sell on breakdown). A stop-loss is a pre-attached price at which the platform closes a losing position automatically — outsourcing the exit decision from the moment of stress to the moment of calm at entry. The one thing it doesn't protect against is extreme price gaps (weekend gaps, news spikes, central-bank surprises) — the SL still triggers, but it can fill worse than the chosen level. The discipline is to use SLs always, and avoid trading into known gap-risk windows.
Educational material only — not investment advice. Trading carries risk of capital loss. Always practice on demo and use a stop-loss. ← Back to Forex Basics