Trading
Updated 7 October 2026, 5 min readA pending order is an instruction you leave on your Broker's Server: open this position when the market reaches this price. It waits there until it fills or you cancel it, with no expiry, so the terminal can be closed the whole time. The four types and how to place one are in Placing orders. This guide covers what happens between placing the order and the moment it becomes a position.
What triggers it
Buy orders watch the ask, because a buy opens at the ask. Sell orders watch the bid, because a sell opens at the bid.
| Type | Triggers when | Fills at |
|---|---|---|
| Buy Limit | the ask falls to your price or below | your price or better |
| Sell Limit | the bid rises to your price or above | your price or better |
| Buy Stop | the ask rises to your price or above | the market price at that moment |
| Sell Stop | the bid falls to your price or below | the market price at that moment |
The difference in the last column matters when the market jumps. If the price opens on Monday below your buy limit, the order fills at that lower price, which is better for you. If it opens above your buy stop, the order fills at the opening price, which is worse. A stop order is a promise to act, not a promise of a price.
Because the chart is drawn from the bid, a buy order can trigger while the candles are still a spread away from its line. Switch on Show Ask Line in Settings (Chart Colours, at the bottom of the chart type menu) if you place buy orders close to the market.
The price rules
A limit order waits for a better price and a stop order waits for a worse one, so each type has one side of the market it can sit on. When you choose a type on the ticket, eTrader fills in a price a little way from the market on the correct side and explains the rule under the list, for example "Buy when price falls to your order price (below the current Ask)". Change the price to your own level.
If the price you type is on the wrong side, the order is refused with Invalid Order Price and a message such as "Buy Limit price must be below the current Ask". The stop loss and take profit you attach are checked against the order price, not the market: a buy limit's stop must be below the order price and its target above it. See Stop loss and take profit for those rules.
Margin is checked twice
The ticket shows Required Margin and Free Margin After for a pending order too, worked out at your order price. That figure is a preview. Nothing is reserved while the order waits, and the real check happens at the moment it triggers.
If the account does not have the free margin then, because other trades have moved against you or you opened more in the meantime, the order is cancelled instead of filled. It appears in the History tab with the status Cancelled (No Margin), and the exported statement lists it under Cancelled Orders with the reason "Not enough margin". An order that cannot be filled for another reason is also cancelled and listed in History.
Changing a pending order
In the web terminal, pending orders sit under their own heading, Pending Orders, in the Trade tab below your open positions. Each row has two buttons:
- Edit opens Modify Order, with the Order Price, Stop Loss, Take Profit and Comment. Change any of them and press Save.
- Cancel removes the order. The cancelled order is kept in History.
On the chart, drag the order line to a new price. If you drag it across the market, the type changes with it: a buy limit pulled above the ask becomes a buy stop, a sell limit pulled below the bid becomes a sell stop. The one place an order cannot go is inside the spread, between bid and ask. Drop it there and the line returns to where it was, with the message Order Not Moved.
The order's own SL and TP lines drag the same way. On the iPhone and Android apps, each order card under Pending Orders has Edit and Cancel, and Cancel asks you to confirm.
While a market is closed, an order on it cannot be placed or edited. The Modify Order window says so. You can still cancel it.
When it fills
The order leaves the Pending Orders list and the position appears under Open Positions with the same volume, stop loss, take profit and comment. The position is a normal one from then on: edit it, trail its stop or close it as you would any other. A trailing stop cannot be set on a pending order, only on the position it becomes; see Trailing stop.
Your phone and browser can notify you when an order fills: keep Order Fills on, under Push Notifications in the web terminal's Account Settings.