selling apple stock limit order
Your order may or may not be executed.  The price of stock can open anywhere.  Often yesterday's close is a good indication of today's open, but with a big event overnight, the open may be somewhere quite different.  You'll have to wait and see like the rest of us.  Also, even if it doesn't execute at the open, the price could vary during the day and it might execute later.
As stock prices have declined, the net worth of people has come down. Imagine owning a million shares of a stock worth $100/share. This is worth $100,000,000. Now, if the stock is suddenly trading at $50/share then some would say you have lost $50,000,000. The value of the stock is less. The uncertainty is always there as there are differences between one day's close and another day's open possibly. The sale price is likely to be near the last trade is what is being used here. If you place a market order to sell your stock, the price may move between the time the order is placed and when it is filled. There are limit orders that could be used if you want to control the minimum price you get though you give up that the order has to be filled as otherwise people could try to sell shares for millions of dollars that wouldn't work out well. "Market orders do not get priority over limit orders.  Time is the only factor that matters in price/time order matching when the order price is the same. For example, suppose the current best available offer for AAPL is $100.01 and the best available bid is $100.00.  Now a limit buy for $100.01 and a market buy arrive at around the same instant.  The matching engine can only receive one order at a time, no matter how close together they arrive. Let's say that by chance the limit buy arrives first.  The engine will check if there's a matching sell at $100.01 and indeed there is and a trade occurs.  This all happens in an instant before the matching engine ever sees the market buy.  Then it moves on to the market buy and processes it accordingly. On the other hand, let's say that by chance the market buy arrives first.  The engine will match it with the best available sell (at $100.01) and a trade occurs.  This all happens in an instant before the matching engine ever sees the limit buy.  Then it moves on to the limit buy and processes it accordingly. So there's never a comparison between the two orders or their ""priorities"" because they never exist in the system at the same time.  The first one to arrive is processed first; the second one to arrive is processed second." The next day the market opens trading at 10.50, You haven't specified whether you limit order for $10.10 is to buy or sell. When the trading opens next day, it follows the same process of matching the orders. So if you have put a limit order to buy at $10.10 and there is no sell order at that price, your trade will not go through. If you have placed a limit sell order at $10.10 and there is a buyer at or higher price, it would go through. The Open price is the price of the first trade of the day. TD will only sell the stock for you if there's a buyer. There was a buyer, for at least one transaction of at least one stock at 96.66. But who said there were more? Obviously, the stocks later fell, i.e.: there were not that many buyers as there were sellers. What I'm saying is that once the stock passed/reached the limit, the order becomes an active order. But it doesn't become the only active order. It is added to the list, and to the bottom of that list. Obviously, in this case, there were not enough buyers to go through the whole list and get to your order, and since it was a limit order - it would only execute with the limit price you put. Once the price went down you got out of luck.  That said, there could of course be a possibility of a system failure. But given the story of the market behavior - it just looks like you miscalculated and lost on a bet. "You said your strategy was to put it into a index fund.  But then you asked about setting  stock limits.   I'm confused. Funds usually trade at their price at the end of the day, so you shouldn't try to time this at all. Just place your order. If you are buying ETFs, there is going to be so much volume on the market that your small trade is going to have no impact on the price. You should just place a market order. A market order is an order to buy or   sell a stock at the current market   price. A limit order is an order to buy or   sell a security at a specific price. In the US, when you place a trade with any broker, you can either place a limit order or a market order.  A market order just fills your order with the next best sellers in line.  If you place an order for 100 shares, the sellers willing to sell 100 shares at the lowest price will be matched with your order (sometimes you may get 50 shares at one price and 50 shares at a slightly different price).    If your stock has a lot of volatility and you place a market order for a small amount of shares,  you will get the best price. If you place a limit order, you specify the price at which you want to buy shares.  Your order will then only be filled with sellers willing to sell at that price or lower (i.e. they must be at least as good as you specified).  This means you could place an order at a limit that does not get filled (the stock could move in a direction away from your limit price).  If you really want to own the stock, you shouldn't use a limit order.  You shouldn't only use a limit order if you want to tell your broker ""I will only buy this stock at this price or better.""  p.s. Every day that passes is NOT a waste.  It's just a day that you've decided investing in cash is safer than investing in the market." "Of the two, an option is a more reliable but more expensive means to get rid of a stock. As sdg said, a put option is basically an insurance policy on the stock; you pay a certain price for the contract itself, which locks in a sale price up to a particular future date. If the stock depreciates significantly, you exercise the option and get the contract price; otherwise you let the contract expire and keep the stock. Long-term, these are bad bets as each expired contract will offset earnings, but if you foresee a near-term steep drop in the stock price but aren't quite sure, a put option is good peace of mind. A sell stop order is generally cheaper, but less reliable. You set a trigger price, say a loss of 10% of the stock's current value. If that threshold is reached, the stop order becomes a sell order and the broker will sell the stock on the market, take his commission (or a fixed price depending on your broker) and you get the rest. However, there has to be a buyer willing to buy at that price at the moment the trigger fires; if a stock has lost 10% rapidly, it's probably on the way down hard, and the order might not complete until you realize a 12% loss, or a 15%, or even 20%. A sell stop limit (a combination stop order and limit order) allows you to say that you want to sell if the stock drops to $X, but not sell if it drops below $X-Y. This allows you to limit realized losses by determining a band within which it should be sold, and not to sell above or below that price. These are cheaper because you only pay for the order if it is executed successfully; if you never need it, it's free (or very cheap; some brokers will charge a token service fee to maintain a stop or stop limit). However, if the price drops very quickly or you specify too narrow a band, the stock can drop through that band too quickly to execute the sell order and you end up with a severely depreciated stock and an unexercised order. This can happen if the company whose stock you own buys another company; VERY quickly, both stocks will adjust, the buying company will often plummet inside a few seconds after news of the merger is announced, based on the steep drop in working capital and/or the infusion of a large amount of new stock in the buying company to cover the equity of the purchased company. You end up with devalued stock and a worthless option (but one company buying another is not usually reason to sell; if the purchase is a good idea, their stock will recover). Another option which may be useful to you is a swaption; this basically amounts to buying a put option on one financial instrument and a call on another, rolled into one option contract specifying a swap. This allows you to pick something you think would rise if your stock fell and exchange your stock for it at your option. For example, say the stock on which you buy this swaption is an airline stock, and you contract the option to swap for oil. If oil surges, the airline's stock will tank sharply, and you win both ways (avoiding loss and realizing a gain). You'd also win if either half of this option realized a gain over the option price; oil could surge or the airline could tank and you could win. You could even do this ""naked"" since its your option; if the airline's stock tanks, you buy it at the crashed price to exercise the option and then do so. The downside is a higher option cost; the seller will be no fool, so if your position appears to be likely, anyone who'd bet against you by selling you this option will want a pretty high return." "Stock prices are set by bidding. In principle, a seller will say, ""I want $80."" If he can't find anyone willing to buy at that price, he'll either decide not to sell after all, or he'll lower his price. Likewise, a buyer will say, ""I'll pay $70."" If he can't find anyone willing to pay that price, he'll either decide not to buy or he'll increase his price. For most stocks there are many buyers and many sellers all the time, so there's a constant interplay. The typical small investor has VERY little control of the price. You say, ""I want to buy 10 shares of XYZ Corporation and my maximum price is $20."" If the current trending price is below $20, your broker will buy it for you. If not, he won't. You normally have some time limit on the order, so if the price falls within your range within that time period, your broker will buy. That is, your choice is basically to buy or not buy, or sell or not sell, at the current price. You have little opportunity to really negotiate a better price. If you have a significant percentage of a company's total stock, different story. In real life, most stocks are being traded constantly, so buyers and sellers both have a pretty good idea of the current price. If the last sale was ten minutes ago for $20, it's unlikely anyone's going to now bid $100. They're going to bid $20.50 or $19.25 or some such. If the last sale was for $20 and your broker really came to the floor and offered to buy for $100, I suppose someone would sell to him very quickly before he realized what an outrageous price this was. I use TD Ameritrade, and on their web site, if I give a price limit on a buy that's more than a small percentage above the last sale, they reject it as an error. I forget the exact number but they won't even accept a bid of $80 if the stock is going for $40. They might accept $41 or $42, something like that." Simple: Do a stock split. Each 1 Ordinary share now = 100 Ordinary shares (or 100,000 or whatever you choose). Then sell 20 (or 20,000) of them to your third party. (Stock splits are fairly routine occurrence. Apple for example has done several, most recently in 2014 when 1 share = 7 shares). Alternatively you could go the route of creating a new share class with different rights, preferences etc. But this is more complicated.