Understanding Bittrex Order Types
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Basic Order Types
Here are some basic and common order types available to you:
Limit Order (Available on API, Website, and Mobile): This order type allows you to purchase or sell a specific quantity of an asset at the price you choose. A buy limit order will only be executed at the limit price or lower, and a sell order will only be executed at the limit price or above.
Market Order (Available on API, Website, and Mobile): The most common way to purchase crypto is through a market order. Market orders simply allow you to immediately buy or sell at the current price. This is useful for users who care more about making sure the order is filled quickly, rather than the exact price at which it’s filled.
Ceiling Order (Available on API): This is a special case of a market order, where you specify the quantity of the asset you want to spend (or receive, if selling) instead of the quantity of the market asset (example: buy $100 USD worth of BTC at the current market BTC price). This saves you from doing the math yourself and ensures you always spend the amount you want, even if there are changes in price while your order is executing.
Conditional Order Types:
These advanced order types allow you to instruct the system to automatically place an order on your behalf based on market conditions. On Bittrex.com, we do not reserve balance for conditional orders before their condition has triggered. The conditional order types we support are:
Stop Order (Available on API): A Stop Order is triggered when the market moves past a specific price point. For example, a stop loss order is a stop order that triggers a market sell if price falls below a certain level.
Stop Limit Order (Available on API, Website, and Mobile): Stop Limit Orders are a type of stop-loss. At the stop price, the order becomes a limit order, which means there is a limit on the price at which they will execute. For example, a take profit order is a special case of a stop limit order, which triggers a limit sell if price rises above a certain level.
Trailing Stop/Stop Limit Orders (Available via API & Website): A Trailing Stop is a directive to place a buy or sell order if the last trade price on the market is a given percent above or below the smallest or largest trade price seen on the market since the order was placed.
Ladder Limit Order (Website): Instead of buying or selling at a single price, one would set incremental buy / sell limit orders up and down the order book, buying when the price goes down and selling when the price goes up.
Time in Force Order Types:
These order types determine the length an order will remain active before being cancelled. Refer to the table at the bottom of this post to see which time in force options apply to which order types.
Good-Til-Cancelled (Available on API, Website, and Mobile): The order will remain active until it is cancelled either by the user or by Bittrex.
Fill-Or-Kill (Available on API and Mobile): The order will be filled immediately and completely, or it is cancelled without being filled at all. This is useful during fast-moving markets, when the user wants to ensure they will get a specific price on a trade.
Immediate-Or-Cancel (Available on API and Website): The order will be filled immediately as much as possible and then cancelled. This is similar to fill-or-kill except that it will allow for partial fills, whereas fill-or-kill will not. This is useful in unpredictable markets when the user is trying to fill as much as possible at the current price.
Additionally, there are two modifiers that can change how an order behaves:
One Cancels the Other, aka OCO (Available on API, Website, and Mobile): When placing an OCO, two stop orders are placed together, a stop buy and a stop sell. The stop buy is placed above the current market price, and the stop sell is placed below. When one of the two orders is triggered, the order is executed while the other cancels out. This is useful to set boundaries around a price without having to worry about one of the orders outliving its usefulness.
Post Only (Available on API and Website): This applies to limit orders, ensuring the order will either be placed on the book or immediately cancelled. This is useful for high volume traders whose commission fee schedules differ depending on whether they are the maker of the trade
| Order Type | Good-Til-Cancelled | Fill-Or-Kill | Immediate-Or-Cancel |
| Limit | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Market | No | Yes | Yes |
| Ceiling | No | Yes | Yes |