Additional Orders

The whole unit on one sheet: four qualifiers layered onto the basic order types, each one a single condition away from a look-alike.

How Long Does an Order Live?

• Good Till Canceled (GTC), also called an open order: stays working until it is filled or the customer cancels it, persisting across trading sessions. Brokers may still cancel a resting GTC after a set number of days in practice.
• Day order: the default on electronic markets. Active only for the current session; automatically expires at the end of the day if unfilled. An order is GTC only if the customer marks it so.

How Completely Must an Order Fill?

• Fill-or-Kill (FOK): must be filled immediately and in its entirety, or the whole order is canceled. No partial fills, no resting.
• Immediate-or-cancel (IOC), also called fill-and-kill (FAK): fills whatever quantity is available immediately and cancels the unfilled remainder, so it permits partial fills, unlike FOK.
• All-or-none (AON): requires the complete quantity but not immediacy; it may rest and wait until the full size can be filled.

What Do MOC and OCO Guarantee?

• Market on Close (MOC): a market order executed at or near the close, within the closing range. Guarantees participation in the close, not a specific price, so the fill may or may not equal the official settlement price.
• One Cancels the Other (OCO): two orders entered together and linked, so filling one automatically cancels the other. The classic bracket on a long futures position pairs a sell limit above the market (take profit) with a sell stop below it (cap the loss); whichever fills, the other is pulled with no manual cleanup.

Which Gotchas Trip Students Up?

• GTC survives past today's close; a day order does not. Unmarked orders default to day, not GTC.
• FOK bundles two demands, immediate and entire. IOC (fill-and-kill) allows partial fills; AON can wait. Only FOK insists on both, right now.
• MOC guarantees the close, not the settlement price. It is still a market order, so it guarantees a fill, not a price; "on close" only sets the timing.
• A fill on either OCO leg cancels the other automatically. Only one leg can ever execute, and the trader never has to manually pull the second order.

One-Breath Recap

Good Till Canceled rests across sessions until it fills or the customer cancels it, while the default day order auto-expires at the close of its own session unless marked GTC; Fill-or-Kill demands an immediate, complete fill or full cancellation with no partial fills, unlike immediate-or-cancel (fill-and-kill), which allows partial fills, and all-or-none, which can rest and wait for full size; Market on Close is a market order timed to the closing range, guaranteeing participation but not the official settlement price; and One Cancels the Other links two orders, typically a profit-target sell limit above the market with a protective sell stop below it, so that a fill on either leg automatically cancels the other.

Need more than the recap? Read the full Additional Orders unit.