What are market orders?

A market order is like telling a store clerk to buy you as many candies as possible right now, no matter how much they cost.

Imagine you're at a candy shop and you want as many gummy worms as you can get. You don't care if the price goes up or down, you just want to grab them all when they’re available. That's what a market order does in the world of trading: it tells the market, “I want to buy (or sell) this right now, no matter the price.”

When you place a market order, you're not saying, “I’ll pay $2 for each candy.” You’re saying, “Give me as many candies as I can get at whatever price is available today.”

Think of it like this: if your friend has a bag of jellybeans and they say, “Take all of them, no questions asked,” that’s like a market order. You don’t know how much you’ll spend, but you’re getting everything right now.

Sometimes, the price might be higher than you expected, just like sometimes you might end up with more jellybeans than you thought! But that’s okay, you got what you wanted, fast.