Placing Your First Order

In the quiet hour before her restaurant opens on Wednesday 21 October 2026, say Maya fills in her first order ticket on her phone: 10 shares of Swiggy. Her thumb is over Buy.

An order is an instruction to buy or sell a number of shares on conditions you set. It is not a trade yet: it becomes one only when it meets someone on the other side. The order ticket, the order window in your broker's app, is where you set the conditions. Your broker checks it, then the exchange carries it out exactly as written. This lesson is about how to ask, not what to buy: choosing a share comes from Technical vs Fundamental Analysis onward.

Eight boxes, eight questions, with Maya's answers. Buy or sell? Buy. Which exchange? NSE (BSE keeps a separate book). Which product? Normal, her broker Sahi's word for delivery (chapter 7). Which order type? Limit (chapters 3, 4 and 8). How many? 10. At what price? ₹229.00, the most she will pay a share. Trigger? None: only stop orders use one. How long? Day (chapter 9).

Some boxes arrive filled in. A pre-filled box is the app's guess, not your instruction: read it as if you had typed it. The line above the button is the check that catches most slips: about ₹2290.00 required, 10 × ₹229.00, the most these shares can cost before charges, against ₹3000.00 in her account. If that number surprises you, a box is wrong.

The opening's slip was one box: ₹17 lakh was meant as a value and went in as a quantity, 17 lakh shares, an order about 5765 times the size meant. On Maya's ticket the same slip, 2290 typed as the quantity, asks for 2290 shares: about ₹5.24 lakh (2290 × ₹229.00 = ₹524410: show the note on 2290 typed as the quantity).

Some checks exist. Sahi would refuse that ticket, because brokers must have the money before the trade and her account holds ₹3000. And since a SEBI circular: show the note on SEBI circular of 13 December 2012, written after "recent incidents of erroneous orders", an exchange refuses any single order worth more than ₹10 crore in normal trading, and brokers must check each client's quantities and values. A slip you can pay for, under every limit, goes through.

Some apps let you fill several tickets and send them together, a basket. At the exchange each is still its own order with its own number, so one can fill while another is refused, and a slip in a box they share is copied into every one: Emkay's 17 lakh was spread across all 50 shares of the Nifty.

Read the review screen back, box by box, every time. Check the share itself too: Swiggy on NSE, series EQ, not a Swiggy future (How to Read a Stock Quote shows how).

Placed, 9:03 am. The order leaves her phone for Sahi, whose risk system checks it: enough money (₹3000 against ₹2290.00), a price on the share's price step, the quantity, her permissions. Some apps show this step as "received" or "validation pending".

Accepted. Sahi sends it to NSE, which gives it an order number and a time stamp. It is now open: waiting in the book. At 9:03 that book is the pre-open: show the note on Pre-open, which collects orders until a moment between 9:08 and 9:10 am and matches them by 9:12 at one price for every matched order (Market Timings and Auctions has the minutes). That Wednesday the price was ₹230.00, above her ₹229.00, so her order did not match. It moved into normal trading at 9:15, keeping its place in the queue, and the app still said Open. Nothing was wrong.

Executed. Later that day Swiggy's price came down, and her 10 shares matched at ₹229.00. The app now says Completed. She has a trade: a promise to pay ₹2290.00 and a seller's promise to deliver 10 shares. An open order can be cancelled; a trade cannot. Getting out means a new order the other way. Even a plain mistake stands: Emkay asked NSE to cancel its trades of 5 October 2012, and NSE refused.

Settled, Thursday 22 October. The money goes and the shares arrive in her CDSL demat account by 3:30 pm, one working day later (T+1: show the note on T+1). Why it takes until then, and what happens in between: Clearing and T+1 Settlement.

A buy limit fills at your price or lower; a sell limit at your price or higher. The limit is the worst price you accept, not the price you will pay.

Maya's order did both things a limit does. At 9:12 it refused the auction's ₹230.00, a rupee above her ceiling. Then it waited. When the price came down, it filled at ₹229.00 exactly, because a waiting order always trades at its own price. And it must have filled: Swiggy went on to trade as low as ₹217.90 that day, and a trade below ₹229 can happen only after every buy order at ₹229 or more has been met. Had she cancelled it before then, she would own nothing.

A limit can also fill better. A buy limit above the lowest price sellers are asking is not a waiting order: it trades at once, at the waiting sellers' price. Had she sent her ₹229.00 limit later that day, when sellers were asking less, she would have paid their lower price. The same goes for a sell limit below the best buyer's price.

Four what-ifs on Wednesday's real range, each order waiting all day. A buy at ₹218.00 could fill, because the price came down to ₹217.90; a buy at ₹217.50 could not. A sell at ₹230.50 could fill, because the price went up to ₹231.00; a sell at ₹231.50 could not.

"Could" is the honest word: at one price, earlier orders go first, and the shares there can run out before your turn (How a Stock Exchange Works shows the queue). A price that only touches your limit has not proved your order filled.

Your price must sit on the share's price step, its tick size: show the note on Tick size, shown on its quote page: a price between two steps is refused.

NSE's definition: an order "to buy or sell securities at the best price obtainable at the time of entering the order". You name no price; you take the waiting sellers' prices (or buyers' prices when you sell), best first. How an order works through them is in How a Stock Exchange Works; whether your quantity fits at the best price, in How to Read a Stock Quote.

On Wednesday 21 October Swiggy traded between ₹217.90 and ₹231.00. A market buy of 10 could have cost anything from ₹2179.00 to ₹2310.00, depending on the moment it arrived. That is the trade-off: you know you will buy, not what you will pay.

In the pre-open, a market order meets the auction, where every matched order gets one price: that Wednesday, ₹230.00. A market order sent at 9:03 would have bought in the auction at 9:12, for ₹2300.00; Maya's limit waited and paid ₹2290.00. Her ceiling cost her a wait, and could have cost her the shares.

The opening's orders were market orders. With no price of their own, they sold to each waiting buyer in turn, at lower and lower prices, "at multiple price points across the entire order book", in NSE's words, until the index's 10% limit stopped the market. A sell limit would have stopped at its own floor and waited there.

NSE's limit today, since 9 January 2023: in normal trading a market buy may trade only up to 3% above the last price (for shares above ₹50), a market sell down to 3% below; what cannot trade inside that line is cancelled, or waits; and a market order is refused in a share that has not traded yet that day. At Swiggy's open, 3% above ₹230.00 was ₹236.90: show the note on NSE's 3% line at Swiggy's open. Brokers may add their own, tighter protection.

When it matters: thin shares with wide gaps between buyers' and sellers' prices, the first minutes of the day, news, large quantities. For an order of 10 in a share as busy as Swiggy, which traded 10808433 shares that Wednesday, the difference is usually small; in a thinly traded share it can be large. The US regulator's investor site says a market order will be executed but not at a known price; on NSE even the execution has limits.

NSE matches an order against as many waiting orders as it takes, so one order can become several trades. You cannot ask NSE for all-or-none: it does not offer that condition.

Say Maya had sent a second order late that Wednesday, a buy limit for 10 at ₹218.00 as the price fell: 4 shares at ₹217.90, 3 at ₹218.00, 3 still open. The split is invented; both prices sit inside the day's real range, and ₹217.90 was its low.

The sum: 4 × ₹217.90 = ₹871.60; 3 × ₹218.00 = ₹654.00; ₹1525.60 for 7 shares. Average: ₹1525.60 ÷ 7 = about ₹217.94: show the note on Average over 7 filled shares, divided by the 7 that filled, not the 10 she asked for.

The 3 left are still an order: they wait under its validity (chapter 9) until they fill, she cancels them, or the day ends. That Wednesday the price never went below ₹217.90, so these 3 would have ended with the day.

The trap: a fresh order for 10 "to finish it" can leave her with 17 shares. Read the screen first (chapter 6). The average leaves out charges; what she really paid in all is worked out in Brokerage, Charges and Taxes.

Sahi shows four words: Open (at the exchange, waiting), Completed, Rejected (the reason is shown) and Cancelled; other apps add steps such as "validation pending" or "cancel pending". Read every status with three numbers: ordered, filled and pending. Chapter 5's order reads 10 · 7 · 3.

Modify works only on an order that has not fully executed, and only on its open part: the 7 shares already bought stay bought. A change is sent, checked and answered like a new instruction; wait for the answer.

Cancel is a request, not an eraser. Picture the moment the screen showed 4 of 10 filled: Maya taps Cancel; 3 more match while her request travels; the result is 7 filled and 3 cancelled, not 4 and 6. Wait for the final word before you do anything else, and never send a second order just in case.

Rejected comes with a reason. Read it, fix that box, send again. Common reasons: a price between two price steps; not enough money in the account; a market order in a share with no trade yet that day; selling shares that have not reached your demat (Clearing and T+1 Settlement); a price outside the day's allowed range (Circuit Limits and Surveillance). Stops have one more check of their own (chapter 8).

"Completed" means executed, not settled (chapter 2).

Any order type can go with any product: the product answers "whose money, and until when?"

Delivery (CNC at many brokers, Normal at Sahi): you pay the full price plus charges; the shares come into your demat after settlement, on Thursday 22 October for Maya; you keep them as long as you like. Her choice.

Intraday (MIS): the position must be closed the same day. The broker asks for only part of the price up front (the margin, explained in Margin, Leverage and Pledging), and if you do not close it, the broker does: Sahi closes open intraday positions: show the note on Square-off from 3:20 pm and charges ₹50 plus taxes for each such order. A ticket left on Intraday by mistake means her new shares are sold that afternoon.

MTF (margin trading facility): the broker lends part of the price; you pay interest, and the bought shares come to your demat pledged: show the note on Pledge to the broker until you repay. It is a loan, the kind Maya turned down for her restaurant in Why the Stock Market Exists, in a new form; Margin, Leverage and Pledging explains it.

Labels differ: CNC, MIS, NRML and MTF at one broker, Normal and Intraday at another (NRML is for futures and options carried overnight). Read what your app's word means before you send.

Intraday hides one more trap: selling first. Owning shares is a long position: you gain if the price rises. Selling shares you do not own is a short position, short selling: you gain if the price falls, because you buy them back later for less. On an Intraday ticket, a Sell for a share you do not hold is accepted, so a tap on Sell when you meant Buy opens a short. A bought share can fall at most to zero; a shorted share can keep rising, so a short's loss has no ceiling.

In India's cash market every investor, small or large, may short sell, but must deliver the shares at settlement. Without shares borrowed through the exchanges' lending scheme (SLB, securities lending and borrowing), a short in shares must be bought back the same day, and if you do not, the broker closes it like any intraday position. In the US a short seller borrows the shares through the broker, in a margin account, to deliver them. A short that reaches settlement without the shares is a short delivery, and Clearing and T+1 Settlement shows the costly auction that follows.

On Thursday 22 October Swiggy published its results for July to September 2026: a loss of ₹922 crore, and wider losses at Instamart: show the note on Swiggy, its quick-delivery arm. On Friday 23 October the price opened at ₹204.95, below Thursday's close of ₹211.40, fell as low as ₹174.95 and closed at ₹176.00, 16.75% down on the day, with 13.74 crore shares traded. Maya's 10 shares had reached her demat on Thursday.

NSE's rule: a stop order waits in a separate stop-loss book: show the note on Stop-loss book, not in the market. A sell stop wakes when the last traded price reaches or falls below its trigger; a buy stop when it reaches or rises above. It then joins the market, time-stamped at that moment. Apps show it as "trigger pending" until then.

SL (stop-loss limit) has two prices: the trigger, which wakes it, and the limit, the worst price it will accept. SL-M (stop-loss market) has only the trigger and becomes a market order; NSE works out its 3% line from the last price at the moment it wakes.

A what-if on that Friday: when trading begins at 9:15, with the price at ₹204.95, say Maya enters a Day sell stop for her 10 shares with a trigger of ₹200.00. The day's low was ₹174.95, so the price passed ₹200 and the stop woke. As an SL with a limit of ₹195.00, it could sell only at ₹195.00 or more: while buyers still paid that much, it would sell at once at their price; if the fall ran past ₹195 before its turn, it would wait unfilled, the price would run on to ₹174.95, and at the day's end the order would be cancelled, her shares still hers at a ₹176.00 close. As an SL-M it would sell at whatever buyers paid when it woke, within NSE's 3% line. Daily data cannot say which came first. Either way, her "₹29 at most" does not hold: the SL-M sells at the going price, ₹200 or less, and the SL can sell as low as ₹195.00, ₹34 under her ₹229.00, or not at all, leaving shares that closed ₹53 under it.

NSE checks a stop's two prices: it refuses a stop-loss limit order whose limit is more than 3% from its trigger (for triggers above ₹50). For a ₹200.00 trigger, no limit below ₹194.00. The trigger is not a second limit: a sell can fill above it if buyers bid more.

A stop at the exchange is a Day order (NSE offers no good-till-cancelled orders), and the pre-open refuses stops, so a stop typed on Thursday could not have caught Friday's open at ₹204.95: the price had fallen overnight. On shares that close by an auction, as Swiggy does, a waiting stop is not carried into the auction. A stop held for days is a broker's service: chapter 9.

For a reader elsewhere: in the US a "stop order" becomes a market order (India's SL-M) and a "stop-limit order" is India's SL. NSE withdrew SL-M for index and stock options in September 2021, and BSE for all its segments in October 2023; for NSE shares, your broker decides whether to offer it. What no stop can do: find a buyer when there is none (Circuit Limits and Surveillance), or hold its price when the market jumps past it (Risk Management 101).

Validity is the box that says what happens to the part that has not filled. NSE offers two. Day: "If the order is not matched during the day, the order gets cancelled automatically at the end of the trading day." IOC (immediate or cancel): it trades the moment it reaches the market, part can match, and the rest is cancelled at once. How the day ends for shares that close by auction is in Market Timings and Auctions.

Nothing longer waits at the exchange: "GTC and GTD: show the note on GTC and GTD orders are not available on the system as per SEBI directives" (GTC: good till cancelled; GTD: good till a date).

One Day order's life on real days: chapter 5's last 3 shares at ₹218.00 end with Wednesday's trading. A fresh ₹218.00 order on Thursday could have filled (the low was ₹207.70). Each day is a new order and a new decision.

IOC, a what-if: 10 asked, 3 matched at once, 7 cancelled at once. It means "now or not at all", not "all or nothing": NSE offers no all-or-none. The pre-open does not take IOC orders.

Longer waits are your broker's service. AMO (after-market order): Sahi lets you save an order after 3:30 pm and sends stock AMOs at 9:00 am the next trading day into the pre-open, as limit orders, Normal or Intraday. The choice is simple: save it tonight, or place it yourself at 9:00 am.

GTT (good till triggered): it waits at the broker until the last traded price reaches your trigger, then the broker sends a limit order. Sahi's rules: up to 365 days; limit orders only; delivery products; each trigger works once; on a gap past the trigger it is sent at the limit price; a sent order that does not fill that day is cancelled.

A what-if on real dates: on Thursday evening, once her shares have arrived, say Maya sets a GTT to sell 10 with a trigger of ₹205.00 and a limit of ₹199.00. It waits at Sahi overnight; NSE never sees it. Friday's first price is ₹204.95, already past the trigger, so the GTT fires and Sahi sends a sell limit at ₹199.00. While buyers bid ₹199.00 or more (the opening auction had just traded at ₹204.95), it could sell at once at their price; had the price already run below ₹199.00, it would wait unfilled and be cancelled at the day's end. A stop at the exchange could not have waited the night; the GTT did.

After it fires, it is an ordinary order: it can be refused, fill in part, or not fill. And when you sell by hand, delete the GTTs you no longer want: each one still fires.

Order book, Wednesday: Buy · Swiggy · NSE · Normal · 10 of 10 · limit ₹229.00 · Completed. It proves what she asked for and that it filled.

Trade book: 10 at ₹229.00, ₹2290.00, with the exchange's trade number and time. It proves the price.

The exchange's own message: NSE sends trade details to her registered mobile number and email at the end of the day, a check that does not come from her broker.

Contract note, within 24 hours: the legal record of the trade. Trade date 21 October, settlement date 22 October; 10 × ₹229.00 = ₹2290.00, plus a few rupees of charges, which Brokerage, Charges and Taxes reads line by line. The same net amount is debited on her Sahi ledger.

Demat statement, Thursday 22 October: +10 Swiggy (ISIN: show the note on ISIN INE00H001014) in her CDSL account, paid out by NSE Clearing by 3:30 pm. CDSL also messages her when shares leave the account.

If any two disagree, write to the broker with the order and trade numbers; the depository's record is the one that counts (Stay Safe). Selling later is a new ticket, read the same way.

After settlement, the screen you will open most is Holdings. Positions shows today's trades, so Wednesday's buy appears there first; Holdings lists the shares in your demat account, and from Thursday Swiggy is in it.

A holdings row shows four figures. Maya's at Thursday's close: quantity 10; average price ₹229.00, what she paid a share; current value 10 × ₹211.40 = ₹2114.00; and the profit or loss (P&L), in two forms. Day's change is (price − yesterday's close) × quantity: 10 × (₹211.40 − ₹223.65) = −₹122.50, today's move only, whatever she paid and whenever she bought. Overall P&L is (price − average) × quantity: 10 × (₹211.40 − ₹229.00) = −₹176.00. Both are unrealised: a gain or loss on paper, until she sells; a sale makes it realised, and only a realised gain or loss is taxed.

Two cautions. Brokers work out the average in different ways, and some add the charges, so check which method your app uses; India's tax always counts first in, first out, as Taxes on Shares explains. And a bonus issue or a split changes the average with no trade at all (Corporate Actions Explained). Each step now makes sense on its own; the next lesson puts them all together, once, on paper.