Market order or limit entry for a 3 pip scalp
Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2026 7:39 am
With a 3 pip target, half a pip of entry difference is a sixth of the whole trade. That is why the market versus limit debate is not just taste.
A market order buys certainty of fill and pays for it: spread, plus whatever slippage turns up. A limit order saves the spread and often a bit more, but the price has to come to you, and the trades where it does not come are not random. If price runs away without touching the limit, the limit missed the best trades. If price touches the limit and keeps going, the limit filled the worst ones. That is adverse selection, and it can quietly turn a limit-entry edge negative.
The fair way to compare is to record signals, not just fills. For 100 signals, log what a market entry would have achieved and what the limit would have done, including the ones that never filled, counted as zero. Compare total expectancy, not the per-trade average.
A rough pattern that often shows up: limits work better in ranging conditions with mean-reverting setups, market orders work better on momentum breaks where missing the move is the real cost. Test it on your own setups before believing either.
Which setups in your system do better with limits, and which are better off with a market entry?
A market order buys certainty of fill and pays for it: spread, plus whatever slippage turns up. A limit order saves the spread and often a bit more, but the price has to come to you, and the trades where it does not come are not random. If price runs away without touching the limit, the limit missed the best trades. If price touches the limit and keeps going, the limit filled the worst ones. That is adverse selection, and it can quietly turn a limit-entry edge negative.
The fair way to compare is to record signals, not just fills. For 100 signals, log what a market entry would have achieved and what the limit would have done, including the ones that never filled, counted as zero. Compare total expectancy, not the per-trade average.
A rough pattern that often shows up: limits work better in ranging conditions with mean-reverting setups, market orders work better on momentum breaks where missing the move is the real cost. Test it on your own setups before believing either.
Which setups in your system do better with limits, and which are better off with a market entry?