Send someone to the sabzi mandi with two different instructions. “Get a kilo of tomatoes, whatever the price” means you will certainly have tomatoes tonight, but you might pay Rs 80 when the next stall was selling at Rs 50. “Get tomatoes only if they are Rs 50 a kilo or less” protects your wallet, but you might come home with nothing.<\/p>\n\n
Those two instructions are the market order and the limit order, and the choice between them matters most on volatile days. October 2026 had plenty of those: the Nifty 50 lost 2.36% in the week to 23 October alone, and still closed the month about 1.9% higher at 23,053. Here is how each order type works and how a beginner should place a trade.<\/p>\n\n
A market order tells the exchange to buy or sell a share immediately at the best price available. It almost always fills straight away, but you do not control the price. In a busy share the fill is usually very close to the last traded price; in a thinly traded or fast-moving share, you can end up paying noticeably more, or selling for less, than the price you saw.<\/p>\n\n
That gap between the price you expected and the price you got is called slippage. It comes from the order book, the live list of buyers and sellers waiting at different prices, because a large market order eats through the cheapest sellers first and then the costlier ones.<\/p>\n\n
A limit order sets the highest price you will pay when buying, or the lowest price you will accept when selling. It fills only at your price or better. You get full control over price, but no guarantee of a trade: if the share never reaches your limit, the order simply sits in the order book and is cancelled at the end of the day.<\/p>\n\n
Notice that a limit order can also fill partly. If you want 100 shares at Rs 500 and only 60 are on offer at that price, you get 60 now and the other 40 wait in the book.<\/p>\n\n
A stop-loss order is an instruction to sell automatically if the price falls to a level you choose, called the trigger price. Until the trigger is hit, the order stays dormant. Once the share trades at or below the trigger, the order goes live, usually as a limit order at a price you set slightly below the trigger, and tries to sell.<\/p>\n\n
Think of it like the fuse or circuit breaker in your home’s electrical board. It does nothing on a normal day, but the moment the current crosses a safe level, it trips and cuts the supply before the damage spreads. Suppose you buy at Rs 500 and set a trigger of Rs 460 with a limit of Rs 455. If the price slides to Rs 460, your sell order goes live and fills at Rs 455 or better.<\/p>\n\n
That said, a stop-loss is not a guarantee. If bad news makes the share open at Rs 440, it skips past your Rs 455 limit and the order may not fill. Some platforms also offer a stop-loss market order, which sells at any price once triggered, so it fills more reliably but carries the same slippage risk as a market order.<\/p>\n\n
Each order type trades certainty of execution against control over price. A market order is certain to fill but not at a known price, a limit order is certain on price but may not fill, and a stop-loss order adds a trigger so that a limit or market order fires only when the price moves against you.<\/p>\n\n