MetaTrader offers a market order and four basic pending orders; MT5 adds two stop-limit types that signals rarely use. A signal tells you the market, the direction and the entry price. The order type is your choice, and it follows from one question: where is the price now, compared with the signal's entry?
The four pending orders
| Order, and what it is for | Where it sits | It fills when |
|---|---|---|
| Buy limit: buy a pullback at a better price | below the price | price falls to it |
| Sell limit: sell a rally at a better price | above the price | price rises to it |
| Buy stop: buy a breakout once price proves it | above the price | price rises to it |
| Sell stop: sell a breakdown once price proves it | below the price | price falls to it |
Limit orders wait for a better price than now. Stop orders wait for a worse price than now, because the move through that price is the point of the trade. That is the whole difference, and MetaTrader enforces it: it will not accept a buy limit above the market or a buy stop below it.
One naming trap is worth knowing before your first pending order. A buy stop or a sell stop is an entry order. It is not a stop loss. The stop loss is a separate level attached to a position, and it only ever closes a trade.
Which one a signal needs
Compare the signal's entry with the price on your screen.
- Price is at the entry, give or take a pip or two. Use a market order, with the stop, and the target your take-profit rule uses, typed in before you press the button. This is the normal case for a signal you are reading as it arrives.
- The entry is a better price than now. For a buy, the entry is below the current price; for a sell, above it. Usually that means price has already moved toward the first target. Do not chase it at market: use a limit order at the entry, with the stop and your target attached. If price never comes back to the entry, there is no trade, and that is the correct outcome.
- The entry is a worse price than now. If the signal is written as a breakout ("buy above 1.0860"), a stop order at that level is exactly right. If it is an ordinary entry and price has moved toward the stop while the setup still stands, you are being offered the same trade at a better price: the guide to reading a signal says to enter at market with the stop exactly where the signal put it, which makes your risk smaller than the signal's. Check the thread first, because a setup that has been called off is not a bargain.
Fills, spreads and the chart
Buy orders fill at the ask and sell orders at the bid, and most charts draw the bid. So a sell limit fills when the line on your chart reaches it, while a buy limit needs the ask to come down to it, which is the chart line plus the spread. A buy limit can therefore be touched on the chart and never fill. On gold, where spreads widen around news, that gap can be several pips. It is not the broker cheating; it is how two-sided prices work, and the same logic applies to take profits.
The mix-ups that cost money
- No stop on the pending order. A limit that fills while you are away with no stop attached is an open trade with no limit on its loss short of a margin call. Type the stop and the target into the pending order itself, so they exist the moment it fills.
- No expiry. A forgotten order fills tomorrow, on a different day's market, for a setup nobody is still watching. Give every pending order an expiry. MetaTrader takes it in your broker's server time, not yours; the end of the session the signal was posted in is a sensible default.
- A separate order used as the stop loss. On MT4 outside the US, and on MT5 accounts in hedging mode, a sell stop placed at your stop level does not close your buy. It opens a second, opposite trade, and you now hold two positions that cancel each other while both pay spread and swap. Use the stop loss field.
- Updates you cannot hear. A pending order does not read the channel. If the desk cancels the setup, moves the entry or closes at entry, your order carries on as if nothing happened. Check the thread before you leave an order in place, and delete it when the setup is called off.
- Sizing from the wrong stop distance. Size the trade from the order's price to the stop, not from the current price. The lot size calculator does it from the entry and stop you type.
Pending orders and a copier
A copier makes this decision for you, by rule. The Forexero Cloud Copier checks how far the market has moved from the signal's entry when the signal arrives: within the deviation guard, 10 pips by default in either direction, it places the trade at market; beyond it, the trade is skipped and the activity log says why. It does not leave an order waiting for price to come back.
On Forexero signals
Our signals post one entry price and expect it to be taken at or near that price, so for a signal you read as it arrives, the order is a market order. When you cannot be there, a limit order at the entry, with the stop and your target attached and an expiry at the end of the session, is the practical substitute; the guide to following signals with a job covers when that works and when it does not. Before you trust either habit with money, watch the free channel for a week and note which order each signal would have needed.
See the signals before you pay for anything
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