Pending orders trigger on bid or ask, and the chart shows only one
Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2026 7:43 am
A lot of missed entries and unexpected fills on pending orders trace back to one detail: which price triggers which order.
- Buy limit and buy stop: triggered by the ask.
- Sell limit and sell stop: triggered by the bid.
- Stop loss and take profit on a long: triggered by the bid. On a short, the ask.
Most default charts draw the bid. So a buy stop placed at the breakout high on a bid chart fires one spread early, because the ask got there first, and a buy limit placed at the support line may never fill, because the bid touches the line while the ask is still a spread above it. With a spread of 0.6 that is a small difference. At a thin hour where the spread is 1.8, it decides whether the trade exists.
A habit worth building: turn on the ask line on the chart, and for any level that matters, add the spread for buys. Strategy testers that model only bid prices will mislead on this, so check how the backtest handles it.
This also explains the odd case where a pending order triggers on a bar whose high looks nowhere near the level.
Has a buy stop ever triggered for you without the bid chart showing a touch, and how big was the spread then?
- Buy limit and buy stop: triggered by the ask.
- Sell limit and sell stop: triggered by the bid.
- Stop loss and take profit on a long: triggered by the bid. On a short, the ask.
Most default charts draw the bid. So a buy stop placed at the breakout high on a bid chart fires one spread early, because the ask got there first, and a buy limit placed at the support line may never fill, because the bid touches the line while the ask is still a spread above it. With a spread of 0.6 that is a small difference. At a thin hour where the spread is 1.8, it decides whether the trade exists.
A habit worth building: turn on the ask line on the chart, and for any level that matters, add the spread for buys. Strategy testers that model only bid prices will mislead on this, so check how the backtest handles it.
This also explains the odd case where a pending order triggers on a bar whose high looks nowhere near the level.
Has a buy stop ever triggered for you without the bid chart showing a touch, and how big was the spread then?