Market order

A market order is an instruction to buy or sell immediately at the best available price. It takes liquidity from the order book, so it is the order type that produces the aggressive bid and ask volume read on footprint charts.

Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026

How it executes

A market buy takes the contracts resting at the best ask. If the order is larger than that level, it continues to the next ask level and so on until it is filled. A market sell does the same against the bids. The order never waits; it is filled at whatever prices the book offers at that instant.

The difference between the price expected when the order was sent and the average fill price is slippage. On a thick book with a small order it is often nil; on a thin book or with a large order it can reach several ticks.

  • Guarantees execution, not price.
  • Consumes resting liquidity; each fill removes size from the book.
  • Is recorded as aggressive volume at the ask (buy) or at the bid (sell).

What it looks like in order flow

  • On the DOM, a market order makes the size at the best level shrink or vanish, and the best price moves if the level is emptied.
  • On the footprint, the same trade adds to the ask column (market buy) or the bid column (market sell) of the price where it filled.
  • A large market order sweeping several levels prints across consecutive prices in the same instant.
  • Delta is, in effect, a count of market buying minus market selling, since those are the trades that carry the aggressor flag.

In Senzoukria

The quick trade controls on the chart are labelled BUY MKT and SELL MKT, and they send market orders through the connected broker account. The order ticket needs a live broker connection, and the guards in Settings apply to it: maximum quantity, confirmation before sending and a daily loss limit. No order leaves without a click; on the autopilot side, live execution requires explicit arming, and the armed state is never persisted between sessions.

A filled market order is part of the exchange tape like any other trade, so its contracts are counted in the footprint cell of the price where it filled. Crypto markets in the application are analysis only; no order can be sent to an exchange from there.

When it is the wrong tool

  • Illiquid contracts or the minutes around a scheduled release, where the book is thin and slippage large.
  • Entering at a precise level. A limit order at that level either fills there or not at all.
  • Large size relative to displayed depth. Splitting or working the order limits the impact.
  • Reacting to a print. By the time the market order arrives, the level that prompted it may be gone.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a market order and a limit order?
A market order executes immediately at the best available prices and takes liquidity. A limit order sets a price and waits in the book until someone trades against it, providing liquidity. The market order is the aggressor in a trade; the limit order is the passive side.
Why did my market order fill at a worse price than shown?
Because the displayed price was the best level at the moment you looked, and your order arrived a little later or was larger than the size resting there. The fill walks through the book until the full quantity is matched. That gap is slippage, and it is the price paid for certainty of execution.

Keep reading

Strategy researchTest a trading strategy, from observation to challenge rulesDefine an observation, question it with the copilot, write a rule and explore costs, drawdown and fictional challenge limits in an interactive example.Quant · Start hereQuant trading for beginners: from idea to backtestDefine a testable rule, choose suitable data and evaluate later periods after costs.Order flow · HubOrder flow trading: the complete guideThe hub. What order flow is, what it shows — aggression, delta, imbalance, absorption, liquidity — and the tools that read it, each linked to a full guide.