Futures Market Orders

With scale trading futures the idea is to enter all your orders with your futures broker as limit orders, not market orders.  This is a huge advantage for this type of trading.

Sometimes I forget this and like today I end up placing market orders with my futures broker because I think I need to be out fast for some reason.

Last Friday the corn market was up and the market closed near the high for the day around 254 3/4.

On the open Monday morning the market started to drop, of course I was hoping for a gap up, but that didn’t work out.  I had 2 contracts that I didn’t sell on Friday so I wanted to get out of them.

The price dropped to 254 and I entered a market order to sell both my contracts of corn.

There was a delay of about 7 minutes while my orders were filled, and of course the price was dropping.  I got filled at 252 ¾ and as soon as I was filled the price came back up to 253 ½.

So it was not a huge loss but it is annoying anyway, when you’re used to getting your price with a limit order.

But that’s ok, I don’t mind taking a hit like that once in a while, I just feel sorry for the people trying to trade with market orders all the time and getting those types of fills on a regular basis.

Now I can go back to my limit orders and not have to worry about this again for a while.