Types of orders in the stock market: a complete guide for Indian investors

At some point, almost every retail investor has placed a buy order and gotten a fill at a price they did not expect. Usually the culprit is not the market. It is the order type.

This covers every major order type on NSE and BSE, when to use each one, and when not to.

The Foundational Three

Market order

Simple: buy or sell right now at whatever price the market offers.

Example: Reliance is at ₹2,850. You place a market buy. Fill comes in at ₹2,851 or ₹2,852, wherever the ask sits at that moment.

Makes sense when you are buying a liquid stock like TCS or HDFC Bank, when speed matters more than exact price, or when you need to exit fast during a news spike.

Avoid it on mid-caps and small-caps with thin volumes. Slippage on a stock nobody is trading can eat 1–3% before the trade even has a chance to work.

However, there are ways to prevent this from happening. through limit orders.

Limit order

In a limit order, you pick the price, the order only executes at that price or better.

Example: Reliance is at ₹2,850 but you only want in at ₹2,800. Place a limit buy at ₹2,800 and wait. If the stock dips there, you are in. If it never does, your order does not get fulfilled.

Limit orders are better for illiquid stocks (the spread alone can hurt you on a market order) and for any situation where you have thought through your entry price and do not want the market deciding for you. The trade-off is simple: you might miss the move entirely if the stock never gets to your level.

Stop-loss order

Now that you know how to use these to sell or buy a stock or derivative contract, you should also know about a stop loss order that allows you to exit (buy/sell) a position when it hits a trigger price you set in advance. It is meant to get you out before a bad trade becomes a disaster.

There are two types, and the difference between them has cost a lot of retail investors money.

SL-L (Stop-Loss Limit)

Two prices: trigger and limit.

Example: Tata Motors, bought at ₹900. Trigger ₹870, limit ₹865. Stock falls to ₹870; a limit sell fires at ₹865 or better.

The gap problem: if Tata Motors opens the next morning at ₹850 — below both the trigger and the limit — the order triggers but cannot fill at ₹865. You are still in the position.

SLM (Stop-Loss Market)

In the same trigger, but the sell that fires is a market order.

Same scenario: stock opens at ₹850, trigger hits, and market sell goes through. You exit somewhere around ₹850. Not ideal, but you are out.

The honest framing: SL-L guarantees your exit price but not the exit. SLM guarantees the exit but not the price. For most retail investors, especially those trading overnight, getting out matters more than getting out at exactly ₹865.

The rest of the toolkit

GTT (Good Till Triggered)

A GTT order stays live on the exchange for up to one year.

Say you want to buy a stock at ₹500. It is trading at ₹620 today. Place a GTT buy at ₹500 and go on with your life. Anytime in the next 365 days, if the stock corrects to your level, the order fires, no screen-watching required.

The same logic works for booking profits. Holding something at ₹800 with a target of ₹1,100 over the next several months? A GTT sell order handles the waiting.

Bracket order

In this, the entry, stop-loss, and take-profit are placed as a single order.

Example: Buy Nifty futures at ₹22,000, target ₹22,200, and stop at ₹21,900. Both legs go live simultaneously. Whichever fires first cancels the other.

This is good for intraday traders who want to define risk and reward before the trade starts rather than scrambling mid-session to manage it. You can also place an SL and a TP on charts, on Sahi. Explore now.

Cover order

A cover order is a bracket order without the take-profit leg. Entry plus a compulsory stop-loss.

Because the stop is mandatory, brokers usually allow higher leverage on cover orders than regular intraday positions. If you trade intraday and want maximum margin with a hard downside limit, cover orders are worth knowing.

AMO (After Market Order)

If you want to place orders outside trading hours, after 3:30 PM or before the next morning's open, AMO is the way.

It is useful when you spot something at 10 PM and do not want to sit watching screens the next morning. The fill happens at the open, which can be very different from the previous close when there has been overnight news.

IOC (Immediate or Cancel)

An IOC order means 'Fill immediately — fully or partially — and cancel any unfilled quantity'. The order does not wait in the book.

Mostly used by algo traders and anyone who wants a specific price right now with no partial order hanging around afterward.

Which one to use?

Mistakes that come up again and again

Market orders on illiquid stocks. Slippage on a thinly traded mid-cap can be brutal. If there is not much volume on the other side, you will get filled at increasingly worse prices until the quantity is filled.

Setting trigger price and limit price to the same value in SL-L. The trigger activates the order. The limit is where it executes. When they are identical, even a tiny gap-down can leave the order triggering but not filling.

SLM on thin-volume stocks. SLM guarantees a fill but not the price. On a stock with a weak order book, the market sell can fill 5–10% below the trigger. Sometimes SL-L with a realistic buffer is the better choice.

Forgetting the BSE 3% rule. Your market order may be sitting pending, not filled. Check the order book. This catches people off guard more than almost anything else.

Forgetting GTT orders exist. A GTT set today is live for a year. If the company's story changes in that time, the trigger you set six months ago may no longer make sense. Worth a quarterly check on your GTT queue.