Why won't they sell?

bubblegum1985

So I'm new to share dealing bought and sold a couple of times so my investment is increasing which I'm happy about. Bought a new one and am confused about something.

I bought for say 100p; tried to sell them at say 110p but it kept coming up as 'no quote available, send to dealer'. As they were only up maybe 15 mins I didn't want to risk loosing so set up a trade plan that if they went above 108p to sell. This morning I checked and they were up at 115p but mine didn't sell? They are now back down to 95p. I'm finding with this particular retail share when it gets into profit it won't sell? It's LSE and I'm trying to sell while its open.

Can anyone advise? It's halifax account.

Many thanks

bubblegum1985

Can I just check; I've out my limit price as all the shares I hold to be sold at limit price 108p.

Biggles

A 'new one', yet you're wanting to sell already with little or no profit? OK.

The share is presumably not very liquid; they can only sell if there's a MM who wants to buy them. Best bet is to try 'Deal now' at intervals, you will eventually be successful.

bubblegum1985

Yea I'm only wanting to make about £100 per investment at the moment, I'm quite happy with that.

I will have to keep pressing that button! It's really annoying!!!

bowlhead99

A few things:

With a limit order, you are right they should be sold when they hit the price. By that it means the price you can actually get when selling the shares (the bid price) equals or exceeds your target.

There are three factors here that might not have been obvious to you.

1) The bid price is what you can sell at. It is lower than the offer price which is what you would pay to buy. It is also lower than the 'mid' price which is halfway between the bid and offer and is the one most commonly reported if you just look at a list of share prices on a shares website or chart. So just because you see a figure somewhere that is higher than your order price, you might not be able to sell at that price even for a small amount of shares, if the price you're looking at is not the indicative Bid.

2) Once you establish you're looking at the bid price - a bid price is simply a price at which you should be able to sell an amount of shares equal to the 'normal market size'. The NMS is usually noted on the stock exchange website and is related to average traded volumes for each individual share. So if the price is 110p-114p for 2000 shares but your order is to sell 10,000 of them, your trade might not execute because even though 110p exceeds your 108p order, there was not enough buying volume in the market to sell all 10,000 of them at 110p. The order will go on an all-or-nothing basis, i.e. if you ask to sell 10,000 shares on a limit order they won't just sell 6,158 of them and leave you with the rest.

3) A limit order is only valid for a certain amount of time set by you when placing the order. Typically it will default to being valid for just "today", which if placed at 4.20pm would only be there for ten minutes before the market closed. If you wanted longer (most brokers allow up to 90 days) you would have to select that yourself when placing the order - is it possible your order expired?

This morning I checked and they were up at 115p but mine didn't sell? They are now back down to 95p.

Do you mean they were up at 115p literally this morning and had then gone down 18%+ before you posted at 8.41am? At a glance I can't see any share that has behaved like that. Sometimes the bid/offer prices displayed out of trading hours are garbage as there are various factors that can mess them up.

Or do you mean just generally they had been up at the 115p level at some point since you placed the order for 108p (not specifically this morning, but while your order was still live)? If so, the only thing I can think of is you are trying to deal a crazy high volume compared to what is available in the market. As a newbie investor looking to make £100 of profit out of an 8-10% rise here or there, it is unlikely you're dealing with tens of thousands of pounds but perhaps it is just an extremely illiquid share.

If you tell us what the company is, and when you placed the order, and when the order expired, I expect someone here can give you some price and volume data that you could take to your broker and complain, if it is evident that the trade should have been able to go through within your parameters.

As a side note - I'm not familiar with Halifax's interface. If, "it kept coming up as 'no quote available, send to dealer'." then there may have been a button to click to get them to send it to the dealer with an instruction to deal 'at best price' where their dealer will work the order for you as best they can, you just don't know in advance what he'll achieve. Or perhaps there is no magic button but you just have to try again with a different order type to deal 'at best'. If the website interface does not offer that sort of dealing without a firm quote, only limit orders, you could have called them up to ask the dealer to place it manually for you, if exiting your position was important.

IronWolf

What share is it, and did the bid price (not the midpoint) go above your order?

Unless its extremely illiquid I cant see why you wouldnt get filled with such a small order.

Biggles

bubblegum1985 wrote: »

Yea I'm only wanting to make about £100 per investment at the moment, I'm quite happy with that.

That's fine if they all go up. But once you get one or two bad losers, it doesn't give you much of a cushion.

gadgetmind

As others have said, it sounds like very low liquidity and huge spreads.

If you add in the very small positions you're taking and dealing costs, you're unlikely to do anything other than lose money.

bubblegum1985

Thanks all for the advice!

I remember one piece of advice I was given when I started which was 'only deal in shares of companies you understand' so I'm sticking with retail shares. The numbers I gave were simplified versions of the actual shares and I was just getting frustrated with the fact it kept going up and appearing to stay up for a few hours but my trade plan wasn't executed. Think I understand now from you guys.

More knowledge can only help!

pqrdef

It's a gotcha with Halifax - if you can't get an online quote and have to phone, they're expensive.

I think IWeb, which is also Halifax, does phone dealing at online prices (check that).