Hello dear community, I’m Marko Canadi, Lead Algo Trading Specialist for Digital Assets Power Play. Before we begin with today’s blog, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce myself. I have nine years of experience in developing algo trading strategies — Mostly for stock markets, along with Forex experience, and I’ve been active in the crypto world for years. Crypto markets aren’t yet as efficient as traditional stock markets and there’s still lots of room for different algo strategies to optimize trading. The Digital Assets Power Play platform is exactly what the crypto community needs. I’m here to provide insight on making DPP as user-friendly as possible, but still functional enough to build complex, successful trading strategies and make them accessible to everyone. Today we’re taking a closer look at order types on the DPP platform. Let’s get to it!

While building strategies, it’s important to know when and why to use specific order types to make your strategy more successful. The DPP Strategy Editor offers the following order types to ensure developing strategies is intuitive, efficient, and incredibly simple.

Market Order

A market order is a buy or sell order that executes immediately at current market prices. These order types can be partially filled at several prices from the orderbook. This order type is suited for strategies that need fast execution and have a relatively small size, where you want to be sure the order will fill and the price will not drift away from your target price. Because of the possibility of slippage, it’s recommended to check the orderbook before initiating a market order.

Limit Order

A limit order is an order used to buy or sell at a specified price or better. It ensures that if the order fills, it will not fill at a price less favourable than your set limit price. This order type is suited for strategies that are built to make sure the target price is achieved (or better of course). For example, if a strategy evaluates support and resistance levels, a limit order can be placed in advance to ensure that order gets filled at target prices.

Limit order options:

Good ’Til Canceled (GTC): The order is active until cancelled or filled. This is the default option.

The order is active until cancelled or filled. This is the default option. Immediate or Cancel (IOC) : Any portion of the order that doesn’t fill immediately is cancelled. This option is great for strategies that have frequent evaluations of target prices and don’t want to have assets reserved in open orders. A strategy “takes what it gets”, and with a new trading signal it can use released assets to make new orders.

: Any portion of the order that doesn’t fill immediately is cancelled. This option is great for strategies that have frequent evaluations of target prices and don’t want to have assets reserved in open orders. A strategy “takes what it gets”, and with a new trading signal it can use released assets to make new orders. Fill or Kill (FOK): The entire order must be executed immediately or it will be cancelled. This option is designed to ensure that the investor does not receive partial fill. Failure to fill the entire order will cause the system to cancel the whole order. If you’re building a strategy which doesn’t manage your assets (e.g. part of a larger strategy designed for managing asset or you just don’t want to keep track of partial fills) this is the way to go. This is as simple as it gets, a strategy is either in position or it’s not.

Stop order

A stop order is an instruction to submit a buy or sell market order when the target price is reached. A stop order is not guaranteed a specific execution price and may execute away from its target price. Stop orders in strategies should be used as a “kill switch” when you want to close position, even if some price slippage is possible.

Stop-Limit order

A stop-limit order is an instruction to submit a buy or sell limit order when the target price is reached. The order has two inputs: the stop price and the limit price. When a trade has occurred at or through the stop price, a limit order is placed in the order book at the limit price. This way the price risk associated with a stop order is eliminated, but there’s a risk that order may never be filled.

More options with the DPP Strategy Editor

Besides basic order types, a lot of other order types and advanced options like trailing stops, limit if touched, or market, if touched, can be emulated in our Strategy Editor with just a few simple clicks. You can even create “custom orders” and of course customize your strategy as you see fit. We look forward to showing off the Strategy Editor and much more in upcoming demos and the beta. More details are coming soon.

I hope you found this blog insightful. Stay tuned for more updates next week. If you missed our latest Developer Update, you can find it here.