What are At-the-Close Order and At-the-Opening Orders? Simply put, they’re a way of buying and selling stocks and bonds. They’re really a hybrid form of limit order...only instead of limiting the order of 100 shares of Mickey D’s at $45 or better, the ""limit"" is time based. That is, it is placed a minute or less from the close of the market...like 3:59 pm New York time, or the open of the market at 9:31 am New York time.
So...why would someone do this kind of limit order? Well, if a company the day before had printed what looked like a really good quarter, but upon deep inspection the investor who owned the shares thought otherwise, then they would want to take advantage of a high opening print, and just sell at whatever the price was a couple minutes after the open, making the bet that the stock would trade down after bigger, smarter, better analysis was published on the stock itself.
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Finance: What is a Delayed Opening?0 Views
Finance allah shmoop What is a delayed opening old man
fitting geese at the park Yeah That's what i am
it's What I d'oh every morning Nine Thirty a M
sharp Yeah Okay Here you go Everything you already cash
but uh oh here's a problem what's wrong with this
guy who he's delayed and there it is Ding ding
ding opening bell Okay everyone sapo supposed to be eating
now Well yeah they do that to goes with the
territory but this one's delayed let's See what's going on
here who looks like this bird's going miss its earnings
number now the company was supposed to divulge all the
information but it looks like they left out one little
key Important fact the ceo is resigning Ouch Yeah that
smarts So the stock closed yesterday at forty two And
it's indicated at like thirty bucks a share here And
all the geese are scrambling to create what's called an
orderly market roughly matched or even sets of buyers and
sellers all coming together to transact Unfortunately there were so
many sellers The g's just couldn't keep things in order
So things air delayed So there are a whole gaggle
Of reasons a stock openings can be delayed in real
life Key nuggets of information not fully globally digested yet
like you know that little thing about the ceo resigning
and that's a good one How about the government indicting
the company for fraud Yeah that's Another good one Or
what about the company Pre announcing that they're going to
miss earnings by fourteen dollars a share A big power
outage on the east coast Yeah that could do it
too well Some computer malware sent by our kindly loving
trading partners overseas you betcha Well openings get delayed for
good reason Because if all of the information isn't fairly
disseminated well ah whole lot of people who should be
selling their shares at thirty eight thirty two a share
ended up selling him for twenty two bucks and will
have been financially you know damaged The whole notion of
a fair and orderly market is arguably the single best
thing about the way capital markets work in america versus
almost anywhere else in the world Like we trust our
system mostly the day the country loses its trust from
the people who participate in the investing community Well that's
pretty much the end of everything we know in a
capitalist society is that right comrades and getting go quack
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