Over the years we've said a hundred times or more, do NOT place a market order in the premarket. It's paramount to suicide, and it's just silly to do it. Why? Let me give you the set up: Like a TV commercial, you're laying in bed on Sunday night with your lap top on your tummy. You are looking at stock charts and news, and bingo, there it is! The ultimate buy! A great chart, coupled with some great news! This is going to make you rich you think. So, you jot down the important details such as the price, and the symbol and you click over to your online brokerage. Right now XYZ is 50.25. But you're convinced that with this chart and this new, XYZ is going to 60. So, you put in a market order for 500 shares of XYZ and go to bed. You are dreaming of "money out the wazoo" and in the morning you confidently drive to work. At 9:30, you see that your intuition is correct and XYZ opens at 54.50! You're so excited because you know it's going higher. Or is it? Readers know that often the first 1/2 hour marks the high of the day for most stocks that gap up. Well, by giving your broker a free ticket to place your order at the market, your order goes in the book, supposedly in the order in which they arrived. Well guess what? For"some odd reason" you find out later in the day that you did fill your order. At 55.25. Why? That was the absolute summit. The highest peak of the day. Now the stock is trading at 52.70 but you own a ton of it at 55.25. By placing a market order, a market maker has a license to fill that order when HE wants. Not when you'd like, and more times than not, what he wants and what you want are two different things. Don't do it folks. Never ever place a premarket market order. You will learn the error of your ways if you do. |
