You buy a stock. That stock goes up in price. Now you're sitting on a paper profit. You don't have the money yet...you have to sell the stock to realize the gain. But as things sit now, your net worth has increased based on the rising stock price. That increase (the gain in the value of your portfolio because of the increase in the value of your holdings) represents your open trade equity.
You buy 200 shares of XOM at $75 a share. You now hold $15,000 worth of XOM stock. Shares go up in price to $80. Your holdings are now worth $16,000. You've made a paper profit of $1,000. Or, another way to say it: your OTE is now $1,000.
The figure represents the unrealized gains (or unrealized losses, if you have a negative value for your OTE) of your open positions (hence the "open trade" part of the name).
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Finance: What are Limit Order, Sell Limi...4 Views
Finance a la shmoop what is a limit order? you want to sell a thousand shares
of Colonel electric it was demoted after they cut their dividend the shares have [Scissors cuts dividend in half]
been trading wildly between $15 and $25 a share you don't want to feel like a
moron for having sold them at fifteen bucks when six weeks later they kissed
25 with tongue so what do you do well you put in a limit order that is you put
a limit of a minimum price of 25 bucks a share for Colonel Electric such that [Pile of stocks appear]
those shares will simply sit in your account unsold maybe forever until
somebody out in the wild blue yonder of Stockland is willing to pay twenty five [Woman standing at a colonel electric stand]
dollars or more for the shares where you have a minimum price limit of 25 bucks a
share in your order so here's to hoping they sell and don't get further demoted [Man carries stock into car]
Sargent Electric is just a place you don't want to go
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