THE CIX ARCHIVE · A FRESH EDITION
Plan the Order Before You Place It.
Patient limit orders are part of the original CIX method, but an order can remain unfilled. This week compares market, limit and stop orders, then turns a chart idea into a written execution plan. Practise with paper numbers first.
Price control or execution priority
A market order seeks execution against available liquidity and does not guarantee a particular fill price. A buy limit sets the highest price you accept; a sell limit sets the lowest. A limit order may fill partially or not at all. Choosing between them means deciding which uncertainty you can accept. The original playbook favoured patient limit orders near a range boundary, not blindly accepting any market price.
A stop is a trigger
A stop-market order generally becomes a market order when its trigger condition is met. The final fill can be worse than the trigger. A stop-limit order introduces a limit price after the trigger and may fail to execute. Venues differ in supported order types and whether a trigger uses the last, index or mark price. Read the current rules for the specific product before assuming that two platforms behave alike.
Put the cost into the plan
For a hypothetical spot trade, buying 100 units at $10 costs $1,000 before fees. Selling all 100 at $10.50 returns $1,050 before fees. With an illustrative 0.10% fee on each leg, costs are $1 and $1.05, leaving $47.95 before spread and slippage. Different fee currencies, partial fills and product mechanics change the calculation. Use the actual venue schedule when reviewing a real historical trade.
Write down the awkward cases
What happens if only half the entry fills? What if price reaches the target before the rest fills? What if the entry fills while you are offline? Decide how you will handle the remaining order and how you will verify the position. An alert is a notification, not an executed exit. Avoid leaving a forgotten entry order live after the reason for the trade has disappeared.
Your exercise
Write a paper order ticket with pair, side, quantity, order type, limit or trigger, invalidation, expected fees and expiry or cancellation condition. Add a partial-fill scenario and an adverse-fill scenario. Compare the outcome with the intended risk budget. The exercise is complete when you can explain both why the order could work and why it could fail.
Based on the CIX Small Accounts and trading-rules archive. Order-type definitions checked against Investor.gov; crypto venue rules can differ. Educational material; examples are not live trade instructions.