amscot Advisor Services currently offers four different forms of free contingent orders. These orders can be placed either online or on the phone through one of our dealers. Whilst these are all designed to trigger one or more orders once certain preconditions are met, you should note that there can be no absolute guarantee that the orders sought will in fact be triggered or that they will necessarily result in completed trades.
To assist in the management of contingent orders, alert messages can be set up to display all of the contingent orders which have been triggered.
This is the conventional type of contingent order, where an order is automatically generated once a specified condition is met.
For example: a contingent order can be created to generate a BHP buy order at $40.00 for 500 shares if/when BHP last trades at $39.99. Alternatively, the contingent order could be created to sell at $40.00 if the last traded price for BHP is $40.01.
If required, you can generate an alert message for each contingent order which has been triggered.
A "One Cancels Other" (OCO) order is a combination, comprising two contingent orders with different trigger conditions. When one contingent order triggers, the other contingent order is automatically deleted. An example of such a pair could be two purchase orders in different banks, each with a specified purchase price. When one of the orders is triggered, the client has made his required investment, and the other pending order is immediately withdrawn from the system.
An "If Done" contingent order is typically piggy-backed on a market order, being triggered only once the market order trades. Typically, the second order is used to cover the position taken with the original order. When used with an OCO order, two orders can be placed: a profit taking order and a stop-loss order. Whichever one triggers first, then cancels the other order.
For further information on the types of Contingent Orders and their implementation, speak with your friendly amscot Advisor Services dealer on 1300 308 305.