If I Use a Price Limit Order at BMO InvestorLine On a Stock Dropping and Trading Heavily What Price Will I Get?

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I don’t “trade” stocks. I buy shares in companies I intend to keep for at least several months and more usually for several years or decades. I don’t like investing in the stock market because the volatility makes me uneasy. I can’t get a decent return, however, entirely from my fixed income investments at the current time. So I pick the occasional dividend-paying stock that appears to be a reliable source of income for part of my investment dollars. Today, I decided to buy some shares of a company that was being traded heavily at high volume and was on the slide; as usual I used a limited price order in my BMO InvestorLine account but what price did I actually pay?

If I Put In a Share Purchase Price of $40 Will I Pay Exactly $40 Using BMO InvestorLine?

I never buy or sell “at the Market Price.” I have this fear of technology and getting caught by a computer glitch that momentarily moves the price a few dollars per share too high or low. I always set a bid or ask price for any shares I’m buying or selling.

Usually, if my offer is accepted, the transaction occurs at exactly the price I offered.
Today, however, I got a deal!

I put in a bid at $40.68 for 200 shares of a pipeline utility stock that is in free-fall in part due to the rapid painful decline in the price of oil. That was a few cents per share lower than the trading range at the time.

I expected it to fill quickly as the stock was jumping up and down 1-2 cents every second.

How I Saved Money on My Share Purchase at BMO InvestorLine

Still, I was surprised when I checked the details on my fill a half hour later:

I had bought the first lot (100 shares) at $40.61 and the second lot (100 shares) at $40.60!

So even though I had authorized BMO InvestorLine to bid $40.68, I had paid 7 and 8 cents less per share on two lots.

How I Traded for Free Today at BMO InvestorLine

The savings is not substantial, of course. I saved $15. However, since I only pay $9.95 a trade, it means I made the purchase “for free” versus my original decision to buy and I saved an additional $5.05. Not bad!

Can I Expect to Save Money Like This Often at BMO InvestorLine?

I don’t expect to see the same savings any time soon at InvestorLine. Over the course of a couple of dozen trades over three years, I’ve only had this happen once before. Still, it was a pleasant surprise.

I have NEVER had a purchase or sale go through that cost me more than I bid, by the way.

PS I have very carefully NOT checked just how far that stock I purchased today has slid by the end of the day. Something tells me I would have saved even more by waiting till tomorrow to buy it. Still, it was a fair price by my estimates at what I paid so I will just ignore it if I could have received an even bigger bargain by waiting.

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Have you ever had a purchase fill at a lower price than you offered at your brokerage? Please share your experience with a comment.

How Your Innocent High Tech Purchase May Be Spewing Out Carbon Dioxide Emissions

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Never get an iPod engraved. Or at least, never get one engraved by Apple. We recently ordered an iPod as a gift and to make it more personal we requested a simple message be engraved on the back. Little did we know how making that innocent request would mean our high tech toy was going to lead to tons of extra CO2 being poured out into the atmosphere.

Where Does an IPod Travel When You Order One Customized With a Message?

Given the high-tech layout of Apple stores, you’d sort of expect they could engrave the backs of devices right on the premises. But failing that, you’d think they could do it at a central warehouse or shipping depot.

Nope. They do it, or at least they did ours, back in the source country.

Do Apple Products Ship Straight from the Country of Manufacture to the Nearest Large Canadian City?

I’d also have thought that if our purchase was going to arrive from the Far East, it would come straight into Toronto (or Vancouver or Montreal) and then travel the rest of the way to us fairly quickly. Wrong again!

Here’s the actual route our purchase has taken so far

Louisville, KY, United States 12/08/2015 1:14 Arrival Scan
Anchorage, AK, United States 12/07/2015 15:01 Departure Scan
12/07/2015 12:39 Arrival Scan
Osaka, Japan 12/07/2015 23:16 Departure Scan
12/07/2015 21:59 Arrival Scan
Shanghai, China 12/07/2015 19:30 Departure Scan
Osaka, Japan 12/07/2015 20:21 Arrival Scan
Shanghai, China 12/07/2015 18:50 Departure Scan
Shanghai, China 12/05/2015 20:34 Export Scan
12/05/2015 13:45 Arrival Scan
Suzhou, China 12/05/2015 13:30 Departure Scan
China 12/05/2015 20:13 Order Processed: Ready for UPS

(Note: there’s a time zone between Shanghai and Anchorage which is how it arrived before it departed.)

Think of how many planes that is. Even assuming it never gets taken off the plane and just stays aboard while they re-fuel, that’s an awesome waste of fuel. And I bet it was actually transported off the plane several times on that route.

What an incredible amount of wasted CO2 and it’s not even here yet.

Why Is This C02 Wastage “Financially” Important?

Well, anything that causes pollution is going to cost us in the long run. Whether you believe it causes global climate change or not, you can be sure that we can’t create more of anything than a non-technological creature would create, without it having some type of impact.

It could also serve as a good reminder of which transportation industries or shipping industries to invest in, or to not invest in, depending on your viewpoint. Personally, I think it shows that Apple’s preferred courier could come up with some significant cost savings if it wanted to. There must be enough business to ship from Suzhou straight to Toronto (or at least Vancouver), somehow.

Next time, we’ll skip the engraving and just write something on with a Sharpie!

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Have you ever accidentally contributed a whole whack of C02 to our environment? What would you avoid doing in future? Please share your experience with a comment.