A Target Price and a Market Order

Two instructions get confused in grain pricing. A target says: sell if the price reaches this number. A market order says: sell at whatever is available now. One can sit for weeks and never fill. The other fills and may not resemble the number you had in your head an hour later. Neither is a forecast. They are instructions, and the instruction should match whether you need the sale or you merely want a price. Spot sales you do need are walked through at https://goodsandgrain.trade/checklist-before-spot-sale.

What a target actually waits for

A target is a resting wish with a trigger. You might tell an elevator to sell cash grain if the bid hits a level, or tell a broker to sell futures if a month trades there. Until the trigger prints, you have no sale. The market can approach the number, miss it, and leave. People remember the year a target caught the high and forget the year the high was a penny short and the bid then fell away.

Write whether the target is on the cash bid, on futures, or on basis. A futures target that fills while basis collapses does not deliver the cash price you did in your head. Basis is its own piece, explained at https://goodsandgrain.trade/what-is-basis-in-grain-markets.

What a market order gives up

A market order trades immediacy for control of the exact price. In a busy futures market the fill is often near the last price you saw. In a thin moment it can be worse. Cash grain is not an exchange. Telling an elevator to sell at the market may mean the bid they can post when your bushels hit the book, which might be after the board has moved. Ask what at the market means in that office before you use the phrase.

Market orders fit when the sale must happen: a bin has to empty, a margin call must be met, a contract deadline is today. They fit poorly when you are only annoyed that the price is not higher. Annoyance is not an instruction.

Gaps and the fill you did not picture

Targets do not promise the target. If the market jumps through your number between sessions, the fill can be different from the resting figure, depending on the rules of that order. Ask whether you can be filled through the price or only at it. Futures and cash also gap for ordinary reasons: a report, a weather night, a holiday. A chart makes this look violent. How to read the chart without obeying it is covered at https://goodsandgrain.trade/reading-a-grain-price-chart.

If you cannot live with a fill that is not exactly the target, you do not want a resting order you do not understand. You want a conversation when you are at the desk.

Size, duplicates, and expired wishes

A target left in place after you have already sold the grain is a second sale. Cancel it. A market order placed on top of a resting target can do the same if the target then fills. One bushel, one instruction. The checklist before adding tools is at https://goodsandgrain.trade/checklist-before-new-pricing-tool.

Put an end date on a target. An order that outlives the crop year is how next year’s grain gets sold by a note you forgot.

Pick the instruction that matches the need

If you must sell, use an instruction that fills, and know the liquidity. If you are willing not to sell, a target is honest about that. Write the number, the market it refers to, the quantity, and the expiry on one line. Read the confirmation. A nod on the phone is not the order.

This is a description of order types in everyday language, not advice to place either one.

Frequently asked questions

If my target never hits, did I miss the market?

You missed a sale at a number the market did not trade. Whether a lower sale would have been wiser is a separate decision you can still make. The target itself did not fail. It waited.

Is a market order the board price I just saw?

Not always. It is the price available when the order is worked. In cash grain, ask the elevator what that means in their office.

Can I have both on the same bushels?

Not if both can fill. Cancel the resting target before you sell another way, or you may be priced twice.