Quote from Eyez:
No he did not. But I understand your looking to increase your post count with retarded comments.
http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=marketable-limit-order
Buy limit will always be below current market, sell limit will always be above. to place a buy limit above market it has to be a buy stop limit, and viceversa.
Again, incorrect, and ironically you linked a correct definition of "marketable limit order" in the process.
Also, it's awesome how you'll just revert to insulting me directly vs defending your argument.
A marketable limit order is a normal limit order where the price is set above the current offer for buy orders, and below the current bid for sell orders. . Just like how OP described. It is NOT a market order. It is NOT a buy stop order. Placing a limit buy order above the offer does not make it a buy stop order like you suggested...
The order tells the exchange/ECN that you are willing to trade on all prices up to your limit price, if another participant happens to have an opposing order with a price that can be matched with your order, you'll get it.
In OP's example, he will send a marketable limit order to buy at $10. The NBBO offer is $9.75. He will be matched on the book on the NBBO should the shares be available to fill his order, and if not, he'll get any shares on the offer with prices up to $10 to fill his order with any remaining unfilled portion sitting bid at $10.
The difference between a marketable limit order and a "market order" is: Should price have jumped while he was entering his order, say, because of news or some illiquid movement, he has a price limit to how much he is willing to pay ($10) and if there are no shares on the offer at that price or better he will just be sitting as a limit bid at $10 instead of getting a fill possibly much higher with a market order. In this example, the price change is a bit extreme (although still possible,) but you can imagine this being very useful when you want to get in an expensive and fast moving stock within a narrow price range without being slipped to all hell by a market order. SPY, AAPL, GOOG, etc...
The difference between a marketable limit order and a "buy/sell stop" order is that the marketable limit order will execute should the book have opposing orders to match you within your limit price, while a buy/sell stop order requires your trigger price to be met first before the order is executed.
Perhaps your retail broker didn't have a trading 101 page on this so you got confused.

*jab*
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Then again, why do I bother? You showed your cards and ego in the last response, so who cares if you were still wrong.. I should have just given you a response in kind, a response that's akin to ET's culture: "You're out of your league son, and you don't know what you're talking about."