Tag Archives: stock

Do I Have to Pay a Commission if My Order to Sell Stock or Buy Stock Doesn’t Get Filled?

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When I was new to online investing in my self-directed brokerage account at BMO InvestorLine, one of my first “newbie” questions was: “If I put in an order to buy a stock at a certain price and no one sells it to me, do I still have to pay the fee?” I could see myself spending my entire investment account on fees for unfilled orders.

Written: 2012
Reviewed: 2023
Revised: 2023

So I asked BMO  by email how the fee works.

They reassured me that no, if the sale does not go through, I don’t have to pay the fee.

Phew.

Also, if I put in an order to sell a stock at a certain price, and no one wanted to buy it, I also would not have to pay a fee.

Partial Fills of Trades Can Result in Fees

There is one exception, though. If you put in a request to buy or sell a stock and they buy or sell part, but not all, of it then you will get charged a fee.

For example, say you want to buy 500 shares of BCE at $40. Someone may offer to sell 200 shares of BCE to you at that price. That will result in a “partial fill” of your order.

If no one else sells you the other 300 shares before the close of trade that day, you will get charged the full commission, which is $9.95 for my BMO InvestorLine account in 2023.

You get charged the $9.95 even though you still want 300 more shares. And if you put in another order the next day for the other 300 shares, if it fills you will be charged another $9.95!

I guess that’s why they call this “playing” in the market. You might have to pay a fee or two you don’t expect. Whether you have to or not is a game of chance.

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Have you ever got zinged with a fee you didn’t expect because of a partial fill? Or did they get you some other way? Please share your experiences with a comment.

The Risks of Higher Fees from Partial Sales and Partial Buys

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At most Canadian online discount brokerages the fee is the same whether you sell 18 or 100 shares. However, there is one risk to know about.

Written: 2012
Reviewed: 2023
Revised: 2023

Be Aware of Thinly Traded Stocks

Some stocks are hard to sell or buy. No one wants to sell or buy their shares, so the stock is “thinly” traded.

You can check this fairly easily by looking at the volume of shares being traded, and the total volume of shares in the marketplace. If a week can pass without any sales of the stock, it is very thinly traded indeed! If a half-hour can pass without a single trade, it is also pretty thin.

For example, on this bonny October afternoon, the volume of TD shares is 400, 515. That is not thin. The volume of FC shares is 16,459. Quite thin. The volume of Leon’s Furniture, LNF, is 668. Very thin indeed.

Partial Sales or Buys (Fills) of Thinly Traded Stocks

If you put in an order to sell a quantity of shares and you do not limit that order to be good for today only, the brokerage will keep trying to sell the shares until they are gone. On any one day, the sell order may be only partly sold, called a “partial fill.”

However, the financial institution will usually charge you a fee for each day they make a sale. So if they sell 2 shares today, 17 shares tomorrow, and 81 shares the next day, the fees will be 3d x ($fee/d). If the fee is $10 per trade, that is $30!

To minimize your risk, you can usually set the order to last only one trading day. Then you can decide whether it’s worth spending another fee to try to sell more stock another day.

Unfilled Orders Usually Do Not Cost You a Fee

It may be worth noting that most brokerages do not charge you for an order that is not filled at all. For example, if you set an order to sell TD stock if it reaches $100 and it only reaches a high of $85 that day, there is no fee from BMO InvestorLine for this unfilled order.

Partial Sales or Buys of an Extremely Large Order of Shares
This risk applies whether you are selling 1 share or 1,000,000 shares. Even if a stock is traded in large volumes, if your order to sell is huge, it may not all sell on one day.

This is usually less of a problem, though, because you are making so much profit you don’t mind paying several days fees!

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Have you ever got burned by excessive fees when buying or selling a thinly traded stock? What tips can you suggest to protect yourself (or us!) in the future?