Trading knowledge libraryWhat Happens After You Click BuyMarket Basics
Market Basics
What Happens After You Click Buy
A click on Buy is a message that makes a round trip before anything is yours. This paper shows you the stations it passes through, the two checks at which the broker's server can refuse it, what the confirmation says and what the row it becomes looks like the second after, and what that same row read a day later on one real trade.
A click on Buy is not a purchase. It is a message, and it makes a round trip before anything is yours. It leaves your platform for the broker's server. The server checks two things: that the account has the margin for the trade — the part of the balance held back while a trade is open — and that any stop or target typed on the ticket is allowed. Then it looks for a price. The trade is filled against a bank that will sell the euros at its price of that instant, and a confirmation comes back to your screen. Only when it arrives does a row appear in the Trade tab. On a quiet minute the whole trip takes less than a second.
Where a click can stop
Most clicks pass every station. The ones that do not stop at the server, and come back as a message rather than a trade. Not enough money means the free margin cannot cover the trade's margin: one lot of the euro at 1.15872 needs $1,159 at one-to-one-hundred leverage, and if less than that is free the click goes no further. Invalid stops means a stop loss or take profit was typed on the wrong side of the price, or inside the band the broker keeps clear around it. Neither message costs anything. Nothing was bought, and the click never reached the bank.
