Orders may not be executed immediately if the relevant market is closed, there is lower liquidity for the respective instrument, or due to the type of trading venue.
Market orders
Markets working time ⌚
If you place an order outside of a market's trading hours, it will only be executed once the market opens again. You can view a market's trading hours and whether it's opened or closed here:
Liquidity 📈
When demand vastly exceeds supply, or vice versa, a delay in execution may occur.
One way to detect low liquidity is by looking at the candle price chart. Low-liquidity market conditions contribute to infrequent price updates which produce either very tall, or completely flat candles.
See the difference between low and high-liquidity candles below
Low liquidity
High liquidity
Trading venue type
Some markets such as OTC and LSE AIM are more prone to low liquidity conditions than other popular venues like NYSE and NASDAQ. Therefore, execution delays are expected.
🔍You can check the market an instrument is traded on in the Instrument details screen:
Pending orders
The order's target price has not been reached 📈
The instrument hasn't reached the limit price yet, so your pending order has not been executed.
The target price was reached, but the order was not filled
The success of your limit order isn’t necessarily due to time and price priority on the markets. The order fill rate depends on a number of elements, such as market volatility, size and type of order, market conditions, and system performance.
There are unstable market conditions
When there are drastic price fluctuations, spikes or drops, and no sales or purchases, your pending order may not be executed. While these scenarios are rare, when they occur, the market will be halted for price volatility, and your order will remain pending.
In any case, please feel free to contact our team 📩 if you have any questions. We’re happy to help.