Ask: Is what the amount the seller is offering ( what price you can buy the stock for).

Bid: Is the price in which the buyer is willing to pay (what price you can sell your stock for)

Buy: To purchase a stock. Creating an Open Position

Buy to Close: will cover a short stock position, sell a call to close and buy a put to close

Buy to Open: will buy long stock, buy a put to open, and sell a call to open.

Cover Order: to repurchase a previously sold Stock. also called short cover

Day Order: Buy or sell order which automatically expires if it is not executed during market hours.

ECN: Electronic Communication Network. An electronic system that brings buyers and sellers together for the electronic execution of trades. It disseminates information to interested parties about the orders entered into the network and allows these orders to be executed. Electronic Communications Networks (ECNs) represent orders in NASDAQ stocks; they internally match buy and sell orders or represent the highest bid prices and lowest ask prices on the open market. The benefits an investor gets from trading with an ECN include after-hours trading, avoiding market makers (and their spreads), and anonymity (which is often important for large trades).

GTC Order: (Good Til Cancel) Buy or sell order which remains in effect until it is either executed or canceled.

GTEM Order: (Good Til Extended Market) buy or sell order which can trade in pre and post market hours but automatically expires if it is not executed that day.

Limit Order: An order to a broker to buy a specified quantity of a security at or below a specified price, or to sell it at or above a specified price (called the limit price). This ensures that a person will never pay more for the stock than whatever price is set as his/her limit. This is one of the two most common types of orders, the other being a market order. opposite of no limit order.

Market Order: Buy or sell order in which an order is executed at the best price currently available. also called at the market.

Sell: sell a stock. Closing an Open Position

Sell to Close: will sell stock, sell a put to close and buy a call to close.

Sell to Open: will sell stock short, buy a call to open and sell a put to open.

Short Order: (Also known as Shorting or Short Sale) borrowing a security from a broker and selling it, with the understanding that it must later be bought back (hopefully at a lower price) and returned to the broker. Short selling (or "selling short") is a technique used by investors who try to profit from the falling price of a stock. For example, consider an investor who wants to sell short 100 shares of a company, believing it is overpriced and will fall. The investor's broker will borrow the shares from someone who owns them with the promise that the investor will return them later. The investor immediately sells the borrowed shares at the current market price. If the price of the shares drops, he/she "covers the short position" by buying back the shares, and his/her broker returns them to the lender. The profit is the difference between the price at which the stock was sold and the cost to buy it back, minus commissions and expenses for borrowing the stock. But if the price of the shares increase, the potential losses are unlimited. The companyˇ¦s shares may go up and up, but at some point the investor has to replace the 100 shares he/she sold. In that case, the losses can mount without limit until the short position is covered. For this reason, short selling is a very risky technique

Stop Limit Order: An order to buy or sell a certain quantity of a certain security at a specified price or better, but only after a specified price has been reached. A stop-limit order is essentially a combination of a stop order and a limit order

Stop Order: A market order to buy or sell a certain quantity of a certain security if a specified price (the stop price) is reached or passed. Also called Stop Market Order and if used to limit the amount of loss on a Position its called a Stop Loss.

VTSO Order: (Virtual Trailing Stop Order) A complex Stop order in which the stop price is set at fixed amount below the market price if you are buying and above if you are selling. When you are buying and the market price rises, the stop price rises proportionately, but if the stock price falls, the stop price doesn't change and the reverse is true for sell VTSOs. The reason for this kind of order is it allows an investor to set a limit on the maximum possible loss without setting a limit on the maximum possible gain, and without requiring paying attention to the investment on an ongoing basis.