Market If Touched (MIT) Orders vs Pending/Limit Orders?

Most people I’ve spoken too don’t know what a market if touched (MIT) order is, and yet they are the most common order type I use for targets. You got to find out why…

So MIT orders or Market If Touched orders are easiest to explain if you think of them as a pending order but with one difference. That difference is what happens when price reaches the value of the pending/mit order. Below you will find a list of supported brokers.

So let’s compare…

• A pending order HAS to fill you at the price you specify or BETTER.
• A MIT order doesn’t, when price hits the level of the mit order , it turns into a market order meaning that it will fill you on the next available price if it’s better or worse.

So why is this useful? You remember when the Swiss floor broke and the EURCHF went nuts causing FXCM to take out a huge loan just to survive? Well if all of a sudden your profit jumped up 800 pips you probably don’t care if you got taken out for a 750 pip profit or an 850 pip profit, you just want OUT! Well this is why you would want to use a MIT order.

The point is simple. It’s probably very useful for targets when you just want to be flat. During times where we have gaps, or huge gaps like the eurchf you could have gotten out, locking in much bigger profits if price gaps.

So use them as you see fit, but let me give you one BIG warning. If you’re doing this with NinjaTrader, there are some brokers that hold your MIT orders on their servers, meaning you can shut down your computer and that order is pending. Then there are some brokers that don’t support MIT orders so they are held locally on your NT8 platform. This means if you shut down your NT8, your orders won’t get executed. So how do you know if your broker supports them or if you need to keep your NT8 running?

So use them as you see fit, but let me give you one BIG warning. If you’re doing this with NinjaTrader, there are some brokers that hold your MIT orders on their servers, meaning you can shut down your computer and that order is pending. Then there are some brokers that don’t support MIT orders so they are held locally on your NT8 platform. This means if you shut down your NT8, your orders won’t get executed. So how do you know if your broker supports them or if you need to keep your NT8 running?

As far as MetaTrader users, your out of luck, MT4 doesn’t support mit orders period. For those of you know know about mt4 and the inner on how they work, you probably know why.