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New investor here, using the Robinhood platform. I quickly learned that placing market orders never really nets you what the app indicates; limit buys and sells fix that. Typically, I assume, limit sell orders fill at the moment a stock's price hits your limit while on an upswing, but I also thought it must be possible to fill a limit sell at a higher price if the market opens higher than that limit. Indeed, I've noticed that when placing a limit order the app tells me my stock will be sold at my limit price or better.

Today I see that my pending limit sell order for PDS at $4.11/share executed at $4.11/share, but the market opened at $4.13 per share, and it was even higher in pre-market.

So my question is, why didn't I get credited at the $4.13 price?

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=fin&q=PDS

PDS price chart, cursor shows price at market open on May 18

randomguy
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2 Answers2

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I have read some articles that suggest that Robinhood receives payment for routing their orders to specific market makers. I don't know if this is true or not but this can lead to inferior fills.

PDS opened at $4.13 per share and that price is where the first trades occurred. PDS appears to have traded with a one cent wide spread all day but what it was at the open is unknown. If it was $4.11 x $4.13 then since your limit order was to sell at $4.11, you were filled at your limit price. Even if it was $4.13 x $4.14 ($4.14 was the day's high), other orders may have been filled before your order reached the head of the queue and it had dropped to a bid of $4.11 by the time you sold. There's no mystery as to why you got $4.11 instead of $4.13.

Just over 60,000 shares traded in the pre-market, mostly between $4.15 and $4.25. The real question is if you placed your order to sell early in the pre-market, why weren't you filled at a higher price? Check your confirm's time and sales to see when you were filled.

Bob Baerker
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but I also thought it must be possible to fill a limit sell at a higher price if the market opens higher than that limit. Indeed, I've noticed that when placing a limit order the app tells me my stock will be sold at my limit price or better.

When a limit order is being placed [just when it hits the exchange] for 4.11; it can match to higher buy order for more than 4.11
If the limit order is sitting on exchange [like you mentioned GTC], there is no situation it will match for a higher price. Even if there is a subsequent buy order for higher price, it will get matched to 4.11 or anything below it.

Read more at How do exchanges match limit orders?

Today I see that my pending limit sell order for PDS at $4.11/share executed at $4.11/share, but the market opened at $4.13 per share, and it was even higher in pre-market.

The Google charts are slightly cluttered. See the same in Yahoo charts. At 9:30 the price was 4.11 and at 9.31 the price was 4.135. So my guess is your order got executed at 4.11 first and then there were other orders at 4.13 that also got executed and then the price moved down.

At 9:30
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At 9:31
enter image description here

Dheer
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