Market order
Robinhood defaults to share-based or dollar-based orders. Share-based and dollar-based orders can default to market or limit orders depending on the time of day and order side.
The following shows the default order behavior for trading during regular market hours versus extended-trading hours with Robinhood. Orders submitted during the overnight trading hours, or when the market is closed, are queued for market open and therefore follow the Market hours order schedule.
| Order type | Market hours (9:30 AM–4 PM ET) and Overnight hours (8 PM–7 AM ET) | Extended hours (7–9:30 AM and 4-8 PM ET) |
| Share-based buy orders | Market* | Limit |
| Share-based sell orders | Market | Limit |
| Dollar-based buy orders | Market | Limit |
| Dollar-based sell orders | Market | Limit |
*Over-the-Counter (OTC) securities are an exception and will remain as Limit orders during all trading sessions.
Your last order type will be the default for your next order.
To protect your account against overspending, we’ll over-reserve 5% of your buying power for market orders placed outside of regular market hours that are queued for the next trading day.
These percentages might change in response to extreme volatility.
If the market price increases, and we can’t reserve the additional buying power required as of market open, then we’ll cancel the order. If you have multiple orders queued, we'll try to fill them in the order they were received. However, if your buying power is insufficient for one or more orders, we’ll cancel them.
Any pending crypto orders may be canceled if additional buying power is needed as of market open if market prices increased.
Let’s say you have 10 open orders totalling $100 with no remaining buying power. The 9th order is the only one that increased in price. Then we’ll cancel the 9th order and execute the 10th order.
During Market volatility, circuit breakers, and trading halts or Stock trading halts, you can't place any new share-based market buy orders and any pending ones will be canceled.
However, you can place other orders as usual (except share-based market buys) during a trading halt and they’ll remain pending. When the halt ends and markets reopen, your orders will be processed.
Orders held or placed during a halt or a closed market may fill at a very different price when trading resumes.