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BY DR. DAVID E. MARCINKO MBA MEd CMP®

SPONSOR: http://www.CertifiedMedicalPlanner.org

Miscellaneous STOCK Orders and MARKET Positions

CITE: https://www.r2library.com/Resource/Title/0826102549

Beside market, limit and stop orders, there are some other miscellaneous orders for the physician or guided investor, to know:

A stop limit order is a stop order that, once triggered or activated, becomes a limit order. Realize that it is possible for a stop limit to be triggered and not executed, as the limit price specified by the doctor may not be available.

In addition, there are all or none and fill or kill orders, and even though both require the entire order to be filled, there are distinct differences. An all or none (AON) is an order in which the broker is directed to fill the entire order or none of it.

A fill or kill (FOK) is an order either to buy or to sell a security in which the broker is directed to attempt to fill the entire’ amount of the order immediately and in full, or that it be canceled.

The difference between an all or none and a fill or kill order is that with an all or none order, immediate execution is not required, while immediate execution is a critical component of the fill or kill. Because of the immediacy requirement,

FOK orders are never found on the specialist’s book. Another difference is that AON orders are only permitted for bonds, not stocks, while FOK orders may be used for either.

Also, there exists an immediate or cancel order (IOC), which is an order to buy or sell a security in which the broker is directed to attempt to fill immediately as much of the order as possible and cancel any part remaining. This type of order differs from a fill-or-kill order which requires the entire order to be filled. An IOC order will permit a partial fill. Because of the immediacy requirement, IOC and FOK orders are never found on the specialist’s book.

 Long and Short Positions

A long buy position means that shares are for sale from a market makers inventory or owned by the medical investor outright. Market makers take long positions when customers and other firms wish to sell, and they take short positions when customers and other firms want to buy in quantities larger than the market maker’s inventory. By always being ready, willing, and able to handle orders in this way, market makers assure the investing public of a ready market in the securities in which they are interested. When a security can be bought and sold at firm prices very quickly and easily the security is said to have a high degree of liquidity, also known as marketability. 

A short position investor seeks to make a profit by participating in the decline in the market price of a security.

Now; let’s see how these terms, long and short, apply to transactions by medical investors [rather than market makers] in the securities markets.

When a doctor buys any security – he is said to be taking a long position in that security. This means the investor is an owner of the security. Why does a doctor take a long position in a security? Well, receiving dividend income to make a profit from an increase in the market price is one reason. Once the security has risen sufficiently in price to satisfy the investor’s profit needs, the investor will liquidate his long position, or sell his stock. This would officially be known as a long sale of stock, though few people in the securities business use the label “long sale”. This is the manner in which the above investor had made a profit is the traditional method used; buy low, sell high.

Let’s look at an actual investment in General Motors to investigate this principle further. A medical investor has taken a long position in 100 shares of General Motors stock at a price of $70 per share. This means that the manner in which he can do that is by placing a market order which will be executed at the best “available market price at the time, or by the placing of a buy limit order with a limit price of $70 per share. The investor firmly believes, on the basis of reports that he has read about the automobile industry and General Motors specifically, that at $70 a share, General Motors is a real bargain. He believes that based on its current level of performance, it should be selling for a price of between $80 and $85 per share. But, the doctor investor has a dilemma. He feels certain that the price is going to rise but he cannot watch his computer, or call his broker, every hour of every day. The reason he can’t watch is because patients have to be seen in the office. The only people who watch a computer screen all day are those in the offices of brokerage firms (stock broker registered representatives), and doctor day traders, among others. 

In the above example, with a sell limit order, if the doctor investor was willing to settle for a profit of $12 per share, what order would he place at this time? If you said, “sell at $82 good ’til canceled”, you are correct. Why GTC rather than a day order? Because our doctor investor knows that General Motors is probably not going to rise from $70 to $82 in one day. If he had placed an order to sell at $82 without the GTC qualification, his order would have been canceled at the end of this trading day. He would have had to re-enter the order each morning until he got an execution at 82. Marking the order GTC (or open) relieves him of any need to replace the order every morning. Several weeks later, when General Motors has reached $82 per share in the market, his order to sell at 82 is executed. The medical investor has bought at 70 and sold at 82 and realized a $12 per share profit for his efforts.

Let’s suppose that the medical investor, who has just established a $12 per share profit, has evaluated the performance of General Motors common stock by looking at the market performance over a period of many years. Let’s further assume that the investor has found by evaluating the market price statistics of General Motors that the pattern of movement of General Motors is cyclical. By cyclical, we mean that it moves up and down according to a regular pattern of behavior.

Let’s say the investor has observed that in the past, General Motors had repeated a pattern of moving from prices in the $60 per share range as a low, to a high of approximately $90 per share. Further, our investor has observed that this pattern of performance takes approximately 10 to l2 months to do a full cycle; that is, it moves from about 60 to about 90 and back to about 60 within a period of roughly l2 months. If this pattern repeats itself continually, the investor would be well advised to buy the stock at prices in the low to mid 60’s hold onto it until it moves well into the 80’s, and then sell his long position at a profit. However, what this means is that our investor is going to be invested in General Motors only 6 months of each year. That is, he will invest when the price is low and, usually within half a year, it will reach its high before turning around and going back to its low again. How can the doctor-investor make a profit not only on the rise in price of General Motors in the first 6 months of the cycle, but on the fall in price of General Motors in the second half of the cycle? One technique that is available is the use of the short sale.

The Short Sale

If a doctor investor feels that GM is at its peak of $ 90 per share, he may borrow 100 shares from his brokerage firm and sell the 100 shares of borrowed GM at $ 90. This is selling stock that is not owned and is known as a short sale. The transaction ends when the doctor returns the borrowed securities at a lower price and pockets the difference as a profit. In this case, the doctor investor has sold high, and bought low. 

Odd Lots

Most of the thousands of buy and sell orders executed on a typical day on the NYSE are in 100 share or multi-100 share lots. These are called round lots. Some of the inactive stocks traded at post 30, the non-horseshoe shaped post in the northwest corner of the exchange, are traded in 70 share round lots due to their inactivity. So, while a round lot is normally 700 shares, there are cases where it could be 10 shares. Any trade for less than a round lot is known as an odd lot. The execution of odd lot orders is somewhat different than round lots and needs explanation.

When a stock broker receives an odd lot order from one of his doctor customers, the order is processed in the same manner as any other order. However, when it gets to the floor, the commission broker knows that this is an order that will not be part of the regular auction market. He takes the order to the specialist in that stock and leaves the order with the specialist. One of the clerks assisting the specialist records the order and waits for the next auction to occur in that particular stock. As soon as a round lot trade occurs in that particular stock as a result of an auction at the post, which may occur seconds later, minutes later, or maybe not until the next day, the clerk makes a record of the trade price.

Every odd lot order that has been received since the last round lot trade, whether an order to buy or sell, is then executed at the just noted round lot price, the price at which the next round lot traded after receipt of the customer’s odd lot order, plus or minus the specialist’s “cut “.  Just like everything else he does, the specialist doesn’t work for nothing. Generally, he will add 1/8 of a point to the price per share of every odd lot buy order and reduce the proceeds of each odd lot sale order by 1/8 per share. This is the compensation he earns for the effort of breaking round lots into odd lots. Remember, odd lots are never auctioned but, there can be no odd lot trade unless a round lot trades after receipt of the odd lot order. 

CITE: https://www.r2library.com/Resource/Title/0826102549

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