Limit and Stop Orders

An order is an instruction the game carries out for you: buy or sell a player when his Price reaches a level you choose. You set it once under Team › Limit Orders, and it trades on its own, whether or not you are online.

What they are for

Buy cheaper. You like a player but not at today’s price. Name the price you would pay, and the order buys him if he falls to it.
Lock in a gain. A player has climbed. Name the price you would be happy to sell at, and the order takes the profit when he gets there.
Limit a loss. Name the price below which you would rather be out, and the order sells if he drops that far. This is a stop-loss.
Catch a rise. Name a price above today’s, and the order buys once other managers have pushed him up to it: a sign the league rates him.

Prices move when someone in your league trades a player, and when every price resets once a week. Both can happen while you are away, and an order is how you act on them anyway.

The four kinds

Every order is Buy or Sell, when Price is at or below or at or above your price. That makes four kinds, in two families:

Limit orders promise a price:
- Buy at or below — buy only at your price or cheaper.
- Sell at or above — sell only at your price or dearer.
Stop orders promise to act:
- Sell at or below (a stop-loss) — once Price falls to your line, sell.
- Buy at or above — once Price rises to your line, buy.

Your price is always the price of the whole player, the same figure as the Price column, even when the order is for less than 1.00 share.

What price you get

Shares trade in steps of 0.25, and every step moves the price a little: each 0.25 bought nudges it up for the next, each 0.25 sold nudges it down. That is why 1.00 costs more than four times the cost of 0.25, and why the two families behave differently.

A limit fills each 0.25 at your price or better. A buy limit at $40 buys a 0.25 step only while it costs $10 (a quarter of $40) or less. If the first two steps qualify and the third would cost more, it buys 0.50 and waits for the rest.
A sell limit counts the price after your own sale. Selling pushes the price down, so a 0.25 step sells at a little under the Price shown before it. A sell limit at $40 therefore fills once Price is a little above $40, enough that each step still fetches $10 or more.
A stop fills at whatever it costs or fetches at that moment. Once Price crosses your line, a stop buys or sells, even if the steps after the first go past your line. It guarantees that it acts, not the price. A stop-loss at $30 sells when Price is $30 or lower, and a larger sale gets a little less for each step, just as your Liq figure shows.

Full trade only, or as much as possible

“Execute full trade only” ticked: the whole order goes through at once or nothing does, and the order keeps waiting until it can.
Unticked (the default): as much as can go through does, in 0.25 steps, and the rest stays open until it fills or you cancel it. The Limit Orders page shows how much has filled, for example “0.50 of 1.00”.

When an order is checked

The game checks orders at the moments a price can change:

Right after any trade of that player in your league, yours or anyone else’s, including a trade made by another order.
After the weekly price reset, when every player’s price is updated from his scoring. Once your league has started, that follows the payment of the week’s earnings; before it starts, it follows the week’s NFL scores becoming final.
After a team leaves or is removed, since its players are sold, and after a postponed start, which undoes every trade.
The moment you place it. If Price is already across your line, it fills straight away.
When the market opens, for an order placed before the league’s trading had started.

Those are the only times a price moves, so an order never misses its moment. When several orders are due at once, the oldest goes first, and each fill moves the price before the next one is checked. Filling one order can therefore set off another.

What can hold an order back

A fill is an ordinary trade, so it follows every trading rule at that moment:

Cash is checked when the order fills, never set aside when you place it. You can place orders adding up to more than your cash; whichever fills first uses it, and an order without enough cash waits, or fills what it can if it isn’t “full trade only”.
Room on your roster: a new player has to fit a slot he can play in. If none has room, the order waits.
One whole player at most: you can own between none and 1.00 of a player.
The market must be open. An order waits while trading is closed.

An order that is waiting is not cancelled. It fills at the next check after the thing holding it back changes. Any trade of yours also re-checks all of your own waiting orders straight away, since it changes your cash and your roster.

How long an order lasts

Good until cancelled: it stays open until it fills or you cancel it.
This week: it ends when this NFL week’s earnings are paid, just before the weekly price reset, so it can never fire on next week’s prices. Before the league starts, “this week” ends at the league’s first kickoff.

Some orders close themselves: a sell order when you no longer own the player, and a buy order when you already own all of him. Leaving the league cancels all of yours. Closed orders are listed with the reason they closed.

Before the league starts

Only buy orders can be placed. Until the start, any sale returns exactly what you paid, whatever the Price, so a sell order would have nothing to aim at.

Knowing when one has filled

Team › Home shows a banner such as “An order filled: bought 0.50 of … for $22.80”. It stays until you press it, which takes you to the Limit Orders page and its list of fills.

Using them well

Pair a stop-loss with a take-profit. Place a sell at or above and a sell at or below on the same player, each for all the shares you own. Whichever fills first sells them, and the other then cancels itself because there is nothing left to sell.
Mind thinly traded players. When few shares of a player are held, a single 0.25 moves his price a long way, and that includes your own trades. A stop set close to today’s price can be set off by one small trade.
Think about the weekly reset. A good-until-cancelled order can fill on the reset’s new prices; a this-week order never will. Choose by whether you want to act on next week’s valuation or only on this week’s trading.
Remember when earnings are decided. Whoever owns a player at the week’s first kickoff collects his earnings for that week. A buy that fills after kickoff earns from the following week; a sale after kickoff still collects this week’s.
You can have 20 open orders. Cancel ones you no longer want to make room.

Questions: hello@fuzzysports.com.