Most of the time a submitted buy or sell order in the stock market can be canceled. It could be rejected or canceled by a brokerage firm if, for example, you placed a buy stop order that is below the current market price, or a sell stop order price has already been reached. Or perhaps you placed an order with a broker that does not handle the stock you are interested in buying.
However, any market order for let's say 200 shares of Never Cancel Inc. is executed immediately, so it would be next to impossible to cancel. But a limit order such as "buy 100 shares of Never Cancel Inc. when it hits $20 a share," should give you time to cancel either online or through a broker.
There is also such a thing as "Fill or Kill" orders. Let's say you wanted to buy 500 shares of a stock but only 400 shares are available at the price you wanted. Since the entire order can't be completed, it will be canceled. To add to the list, there are one-cancels-the-other orders (OCO). Johnny Trader thinks Take a Chance On Me Inc. might break out and go up above the current price range of $25 to $50, but also wants to protect himself on the off chance he is wrong. So he places an OCO with a buy limit of $52 and a sell limit for $23. If the stock hits $52 the buy order goes through and the sell order is canceled. And alternatively, if it goes down to $23 the sell order is executed and the buy order canceled.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is an All or None Order?70 Views
finance a la shmoop what is an all-or-none order oh you'd think that
spoiled brats only live on playgrounds of participation trophy cities hmm but [Boys holding participation trophies]
that is oh so sadly not true they roam the wild hallways of Wall Street
investment firms in droves and all-or-none order means that a buyer or
seller of stock either wants all of their shares bought or sold or none of
them and yes this applies to bonds preferred stocks and other random [Man discussing stocks and bonds]
hybrids as well.....A buyer has a portfolio of 500 million dollars in small cap
growth stocks generally speaking she's told her clients that she won't take
less than a 2% position in anything because she wants to be able to focus on
a core group of stocks and really be on top of any big movements hoping to sell [Stocks in a sack land on a table]
the shares before well, any huge problems holding so in this case she's
found a company she loves an appropriately named coal company for [Woman looking through binoculars in her car]
spoiled investors called mine mine mine the only problem is that the stock is
thinly traded that is not a ton of shares trade every day and she needs to
own either ten million dollars worth of stock which would be a two percent
position or she doesn't want to own any the stock at the moment is trading at
ten dollars and seven cents a share and she wants it at ten bucks or better...
well at ten dollars and one penny she has no interest whatsoever in that stock [Stock graph for mine mine mine company]
at 10.00 she's a buyer so that is her limit order but on this all-or-none
order she waits and waits and waits knowing that sometimes all-or-none [Woman looking at laptop waiting for the stocks]
orders simply never get filled other times they get filled scarily too fast
like the seller knew something the buyer did not but along comes a bad market day
the White House says something stupid what are the odds? and the market tanks for
an hour and blam she is the proud new owner of a million shares of mine mine
mine good for her those shares are now all hers hers hers [Pigeon poops on mans head]
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