What Is a Market Order/Market Buy/Market Sell?
A market order is an instruction to buy or sell a security at the best available price in the current market. Market orders are typically used when investors want to execute their trades as quickly as possible, and they don’t care about getting a specific price for the trade. When placing a market order, you’re essentially telling your broker that you want to buy or sell immediately at whatever price is currently being offered by other traders in the marketplace.
Market buys and sells refer specifically to buying and selling stocks on stock exchanges such as NASDAQ or NYSE. A market buy instructs your broker to purchase shares of a particular stock at its current asking price; similarly, a market sell instructs them to sell shares of that same stock at its current bid price. These types of orders can be useful if you need immediate execution but don’t have time (or interest) in researching what would be considered fair value for the security before executing it.