Order types in depth (India)

🎯 In 30 seconds: Every order trades off certainty of a fill against control of the price. A market order fills now at an unknown price. A limit order fixes your worst price but may never fill. A stop-loss (SL) order waits for a trigger price and then becomes a limit order, which can sit unfilled if the stock gaps past it. On Indian exchanges an order lives for the DAY or is IOC (immediate or cancel). Extras such as AMO, GTT, cover and bracket orders are broker features, not exchange orders, and work only as well as your broker's systems.

The trade-off behind every order

Think of buying mangoes at a busy market. You can say "give me a dozen, whatever the price" and walk away with mangoes in a minute, maybe overpaying. Or you can say "only if it is ₹600 a dozen or less" and maybe walk home with none. You cannot have both a guaranteed dozen and a guaranteed price.

Orders on NSE and BSE work the same way. Choosing an order type means choosing which of the two you are willing to give up.

Order type	Fill guaranteed?	Price guaranteed?	Typical use
Market	Nearly always, in liquid stocks during market hours	No	Small orders in very busy stocks
Limit	No	Yes, your price or better	Most entries and exits
Stop-loss limit (SL)	No, even after the trigger	Yes, once triggered	Exit with a floor price
Stop-loss market (SL-M)	Yes, once triggered (where allowed)	No	Exit at any price once the trigger hits

How the exchange matches your order

NSE runs an order-driven market rather than a quote-driven one: prices come from the orders investors and traders place, not from dealers quoting their own prices. Every buy and sell order goes into one electronic order book, and the system matches them by price-time priority: the highest buy and the lowest sell come first, and among orders at the same price, the one entered first comes first.

An order that cannot match at once waits in the book as a passive order. An order that arrives and matches against it is the active one. Trades happen at the passive order's price. So if the best sell order is waiting at ₹250.10 and you send a buy limit at ₹251, you pay ₹250.10, not ₹251.

The exchange itself accepts a short list of order conditions. NSE describes them in three groups:

Price: limit, market, and stop-loss (with a trigger price).
Time: DAY and IOC. NSE's system also has Good Till Cancelled and Good Till Date conditions, but NSE states that they are not currently available, following SEBI directives.
Quantity: disclosed quantity. All-or-none and minimum-fill orders exist in the system but are also switched off under SEBI directives.

Everything else on your broker's order screen is built by the broker on top of these.

Market orders

A market order says "buy (or sell) now at the best available price". For a buy, it takes the lowest sell orders in the book. For a sell, it takes the highest buy orders.

For a few shares of a busy large company, the fill is usually within a few paise of the last price. The risk shows up in three situations: fast markets after news, thin stocks with few orders in the book, and orders placed before the open, which fill at whatever the opening price turns out to be.

NSE puts a guard rail on market orders in the cash market, called market price protection. Under NSE circulars of 16 and 30 December 2022, effective 9 January 2023:

A market order is rejected if the stock has not traded yet that day.
A market order fills only up to a limit away from the last traded price: 3% for stocks above ₹50, or ₹1.50 for stocks at ₹50 or below.
Any quantity that cannot fill inside that range is cancelled, or, for a DAY order, left waiting in the book as an ordinary order at the edge of the range.

So a market buy for a ₹200 stock will not fill above about ₹206 in one go. That protects you from the worst accidents, but 3% is still a lot to give away on one order. NSE has a similar mechanism in derivatives, and many brokers add their own protection setting on top. Your broker's order window may show it as "market protection".

Limit orders

A limit order sets the worst price you accept. A buy limit at ₹250 fills at ₹250 or lower. A sell limit at ₹280 fills at ₹280 or higher.

The cost is that the order may not fill. Even when the price touches your limit, orders at the same price that arrived earlier are ahead of yours in the queue. A limit order away from the current price is waiting for the market to come to you.

To buy now with a limit, set it at or a little above the best sell price. You will usually fill at the best sell price or better, and you are protected if the price jumps a second before your order arrives. To sell now, set it at or a little below the best buy price.

Limit prices have to be a multiple of the stock's tick size, the smallest price step the exchange allows. Since 15 April 2025, NSE sets the tick size by price slab and reviews it monthly, based on the closing price on the last trading day of the month:

Share price	Tick size
Below ₹250	₹0.01
₹250 to ₹1,000	₹0.05
Above ₹1,000 to ₹5,000	₹0.10
Above ₹5,000 to ₹10,000	₹0.50
Above ₹10,000 to ₹20,000	₹1.00
Above ₹20,000	₹5.00

An order for a ₹480 stock at ₹480.03 is rejected because the tick there is 5 paise. ₹480.05 is accepted. ETFs follow different rules, and the slabs can change, so check the tick shown in your broker's order window.

Stop-loss orders: SL and SL-M

A stop-loss order sits outside the order book until the price reaches its trigger price. On NSE, a sell stop-loss triggers when the last traded price falls to or below the trigger. A buy stop-loss triggers when the last traded price rises to or above it. Until then the order is invisible to the market.

SL (stop-loss limit) has two prices: the trigger and a limit. Once triggered, it enters the book as a limit order at your limit price. NSE's own example: a buy stop-loss with trigger ₹93 and limit ₹95, placed when the stock is at ₹90, is released into the book as a ₹95 limit order once the price reaches ₹93.
SL-M (stop-loss market) has only a trigger. Once triggered it becomes a market order.

SL-M is not available everywhere. NSE discontinued SL-M orders in index options and stock options from 27 September 2021. SL limit orders remain available in options. In the cash market NSE still handles SL-M orders, and its market price protection applies to them once they trigger. Some brokers block SL-M in more segments than the exchange does, so check what your broker's order window allows.

For a sell SL, set the limit a little below the trigger, for example trigger ₹480 and limit ₹477. That gives the order room to fill if the price is falling quickly. If the limit equals the trigger, a fast fall can skip straight past it.

Worked example: a gap through a stop at 9:15

All numbers are hypothetical. You own 100 shares of Sharma Foods Ltd, bought at ₹500. You place a sell SL with trigger ₹480 and limit ₹477, planning to lose at most about ₹2,000 to ₹2,300. The stock closes at ₹488. That evening the company announces weak results. The next morning the pre-open auction sets the opening price at ₹455, and over the next week the stock drifts to ₹430.

The stock never traded at ₹480 or ₹477. An SL-M would have sold near ₹455. An SL with a ₹477 limit would have triggered and then sat unfilled while the price kept falling.

Planned loss: 100 x (₹500 to about ₹477)	about ₹2,300
SL-M fills near ₹455: 100 x ₹45	about ₹4,500 realised loss
SL with ₹477 limit does not fill; stock at ₹430 a week later	₹7,000 loss on paper, still holding

Neither order failed. Each did what it was built to do. The market version got you out at a bad price. The limit version protected the price and left you holding a falling stock. In a gap you cannot have both.

A stop is not a guaranteed maximum loss

Results, regulatory news and global events often land outside market hours, and Indian stocks then reprice at the 9:15 open. A stock locked at its lower circuit can also leave a sell stop with no buyers at all. Your real worst case is the gap, not the stop distance. That is why position size matters more than stop placement. See Position sizing and Stop losses.

Time conditions: DAY and IOC

DAY: valid for the trading day it is entered. If it has not filled by the close, the exchange cancels it.
IOC (immediate or cancel): fills whatever it can the moment it reaches the market and cancels the rest. A buy IOC for 500 shares that finds only 200 at your limit buys 200 and drops the other 300.

Because the exchange does not currently accept good-till-cancelled orders, any order you want to keep for more than a day has to be stored by your broker and sent again. That is what a GTT is.

Disclosed quantity

A disclosed quantity order shows only part of your order to the market at a time. NSE's example: an order for 1,000 shares with a disclosed quantity of 200 shows 200; when those trade, the next 200 appear, and so on. The exchange sets a minimum disclosed quantity. Brokers usually state the current minimum next to the field. Disclosed quantity is not allowed in the pre-open session, where every order must show its full quantity.

For most beginners, with orders of a few dozen shares, this does not matter. It exists so large orders do not reveal their full size.

Price bands: why an order can be rejected

Each stock can only trade within a price band around the previous day's close. An order priced outside the band is rejected by the exchange; it never enters the book.

Stocks without derivatives have fixed bands set by the exchange, at levels up to 20% either way.
Stocks with futures and options, and index futures, have no fixed band. They have dynamic price bands that start at 10% of the previous day's close. If trading pushes against the band, the exchange widens it: the first two times by 5%, after a 15-minute cooling-off period, then by 3%, then by 2%, with longer pauses each time. (SEBI master circular for stock exchanges, 30 December 2024.)

Worked example (hypothetical): Patil Cement has a 5% band and closed at ₹220 yesterday. Today the exchange accepts orders between ₹209 and ₹231. A buy limit at ₹232 is rejected. If heavy buying pushes the price to ₹231 and it stays there, the stock is at its upper circuit: there are buyers queued at ₹231 and hardly any sellers. A sell stop-loss in a stock locked at its lower circuit may sit for days without a buyer. Bid, ask and liquidity shows what that looks like in the order book, and The rules every Indian trader runs into covers bands and circuit breakers in full.

Broker features: AMO, GTT, cover and bracket orders

These appear on many Indian broker screens. None of them is an exchange order type. Each one is stored, watched or managed by your broker's systems, which then send ordinary exchange orders. Availability, rules and charges differ from broker to broker.

Feature	What it does	What to check
AMO (after market order)	Lets you place an order after hours. The broker holds it and sends it to the exchange when the next session opens.	When the broker releases it (pre-open or at 9:15), and that it fills at the opening price if it is a market order.
GTT (good till triggered)	The broker stores a trigger and a limit order for days or months and places the order only when the price hits the trigger.	Nothing is in the exchange's book until it triggers. If the price gaps past your limit, the order may not fill. Check how long a GTT lasts and whether funds or shares must be available at trigger time.
Cover order	An intraday order sent together with a compulsory stop-loss.	Whether it is offered at all, its margin, and the auto square-off time.
Bracket order	An intraday entry with both a target and a stop-loss attached; when one fills, the other is cancelled.	Many brokers have withdrawn or limited bracket orders. Check before relying on one.

Because these depend on the broker's servers, a broker outage can mean a GTT or a bracket leg does not act. For a position that matters, consider whether a plain stop-loss order on the exchange is the better tool on the day.

Before 9:15 and after 3:30

The normal session runs from 9:15 am to 3:30 pm IST. Two auctions sit on either side of it, and the order types they accept are narrower.

Pre-open session, 9:00 to 9:15 am. From 7 September 2026, under a SEBI circular of 16 January 2026: limit and market orders from 9:00 to 9:05, limit orders only from 9:05 with a random close between 9:08 and 9:10, then matching at a single opening price and transition to normal trading by 9:15. No stop-loss orders and no disclosed-quantity orders are allowed in the pre-open.
Closing auction session. From 3 August 2026, stocks in the F&O segment get their closing price from a closing auction after 3:15 pm. Only limit and market orders are accepted, within 3% of a reference price. Other stocks still close at the volume-weighted average price of the last 30 minutes. SEBI revised these timings again on 15 October 2026, with changes from 7 December 2026.

If you place an AMO or a market order before the open, it takes part in the pre-open auction or meets the 9:15 price. The opening price is often well away from the previous close, which is why stop-losses carried overnight can be skipped. Market hours and settlement has the full timetable.

A default setup for beginners

Use limit orders for entries and exits, priced at or just through the best opposite price if you want to fill now.
Use DAY validity. Cancel and re-enter rather than leaving stale orders behind.
Place a stop-loss right after entering a trade you intend to hold, with a limit a little beyond the trigger, and accept that gaps can skip it.
Avoid market orders in the first minutes after 9:15, in thin stocks, and in illiquid options.
Read the order confirmation screen every time: Buy or Sell, quantity, price, trigger, product (delivery or intraday) and exchange.

Try it

Open your broker's order window for any large company without placing the order. List the order types, validity choices and product types it offers. Mark which ones are exchange conditions (limit, market, SL, SL-M, DAY, IOC, disclosed quantity) and which are broker features.
On the stock's NSE quote page, find its price band and the current best buy and sell. Work out the highest and lowest limit price the exchange would accept today.
In a notebook, write out an SL sell order for a hypothetical holding: trigger, limit, quantity. Then write what would happen if the stock opened 6% lower tomorrow.
Practise placing, modifying and cancelling each order type with a practice account or on paper before using real money. See Practice first.

Check yourself

The best sell order for a stock is ₹250.10 and you send a buy limit at ₹251. At what price do you trade? Answer: ₹250.10. On NSE trades happen at the price of the order already waiting in the book.
What is the difference between an SL and an SL-M order once the trigger is hit? Answer: An SL becomes a limit order at your limit price and may not fill. An SL-M becomes a market order and fills at whatever price is available.
Is a GTT an exchange order? Answer: No. It is stored by your broker, and an ordinary order is sent to the exchange only when the trigger is hit.
You hold a stock with a sell SL triggered at ₹480 and limit ₹477. It opens at ₹455 after bad news. What happens? Answer: The order triggers but cannot fill, because the best buyers are far below ₹477. It sits in the book unfilled unless the price comes back up.

🎛️ Order types in depth: market, limit, stop-loss and more