forex-scalping.com

GTC vs day orders in MT5: order expiry settings scalpers overlook

When you place a pending order in MT5, there's an expiry setting. Good till cancelled, good for the day, or good till a specific time. Most people leave it on the default and never think about it again.

That default can cause problems. A good till cancelled limit order placed for a London setup will still be there in Asia, the next day, or after the weekend if you forget about it. Market conditions might be completely different by then, and it can fill at a time when you'd never place that trade. I've seen plenty of posts from people surprised by a fill hours after they'd stopped watching.

Day orders expire at the end of the trading day, but the end of the day is broker server time, which might not match when you think the day ends.

The specific time option is the most useful for scalpers. If a setup is only valid for the London morning, set the order to expire at, say, 11:00 London. If it isn't hit by then, it disappears.

It's a small habit that removes a whole category of surprise fills. Some brokers don't support every expiry type on every symbol, so check what's available in the order window.

Expiry interacts with news too. If you place a pending order before a release and it's still active when the release hits, it can be filled at a much worse price than you set, especially stop orders. Setting the expiry for a minute or two before the release gives you automatic protection. It's the kind of thing you set once and stop thinking about, and it can save you from fills you never wanted during the worst moments. The specific time option makes this easy, and it only takes a few seconds to set.

For EA developers, the expiry setting is part of the order request, and some brokers reject orders with expiry types they don't support. If your EA works on one broker and fails on another with an error about invalid expiration, that's likely the reason. Checking the symbol's allowed expiry modes from the symbol info before sending makes the EA more portable. A small detail, but it causes a lot of confusion when it happens. A broker that accepts GTC but rejects day orders on certain symbols can break an EA in a way that only shows up on that one account.

A forgotten GTC pending order can trigger days later when the setup is long gone. For scalpers, using day orders or a specific expiry time is safer.

MT5 also allows setting a default expiry in the order window, so changing it once to "today" removes the risk for all future orders. It only takes a few seconds and can prevent a very unpleasant surprise on a quiet morning.

Weekend handling is something to check too. A GTC order placed on Friday stays active over the weekend, and if price gaps through it on Sunday night, it fills at the opening price, which could be quite far from your level. A day order would have expired on Friday. If you place pending orders late in the week, choosing an expiry that ends before the weekend close avoids gap fills you didn't intend. Some traders simply cancel all pending orders on Friday afternoon as a routine. It only takes a minute and avoids a nasty Monday surprise.

An interesting use of expiry is for setups that only make sense for a short time. If a breakout setup is only valid for the next hour, setting an expiry of one hour on the pending order means it can't fill hours later when conditions have changed. That's especially useful if you're not watching the screen constantly. The order either triggers while the setup is relevant or disappears. It's a cleaner way to manage stale orders than remembering to delete them by hand. In MT5 the 'specified' expiry type lets you set an exact time, which works well for this.