The other day placed on order for 116 shares of stock “X”. Gross majority of the time orders it filled in one lot, occasionally filled in two. This time was way different. Got about 20 partial fill orders with quit a few being 1 share bought. Think the biggest lot was 48. Plenty of 6-10 shares. Strangely, all the same price. While I don’t remember the time stamps, can’t imagine being more than a few seconds apart. And this is not some thinly traded stock, it is one of the largest in its category and well known.
Happens to me from time to time using Schwab. It’s not so bad if they all fill quickly. Sometimes I’ve had a partial fill and had to wait a few days for the rest of the shares to fill. Thankfully, that’s not too often.
Back when they still charged commissions for stock trades, when this happened with a GTC (“good till cancelled”) order, you would end up paying the commission AGAIN if it partially filled on different days! After being burned once or twice that way, I added AON (“all or none”) to some GTC orders.
I often see that happen with limit orders, and more frequently with options than stocks.
These days with mostly automated broker downloads into tax prep software when it comes time to settle with the IRS, the additional reporting that creates is much less of a hassle than it used to be.
As with much in investing, it’s a trade off. Particularly when it comes to options investing, I’d much rather deal with the partial fills and potential missed opportunities of limit orders than the wild swings and risky fill prices of market orders.
It happens rarely to me, but it has happened. And like your case, the last time it was a large cap, so no shortage of shares available. It was a high per share price, and it was not a round lot ( 100 shares…), and it executed in 2 transactions at identical prices. It was a little confusing when I first looked at the order, but it ended up being exactly what I asked for. It was in my IRA, so don’t have to worry about screwing up schedule-D down the road, if-when I sell, which is nice.
For options orders I NEVER EVER use market orders, that’s just a clear invitation to get ripped off. They seem to be able to rapidly adjust the bid and ask to get the “market order” the worst possible execution price.
But for very liquid stocks, I will sometimes use market orders because a few bucks either way won’t make a big difference. For example, when I bought Disney two weeks ago, the bid/ask was something like 85.89/85.91, and I was on mobile, so no big screen, and I didn’t want to waste time looking at the detailed quote on a tiny screen, so I simply clicked “market”, and got an execution at 86.905. That’s good enough, it’s true that I probably would have saved half a cent with a limit order, but it was only 100 shares, so I paid 50 cents extra for the order. But I would only do that for things that trade with high volume and rapidly with tight spreads because otherwise you could get stuck with a really bad execution.
