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In short: you do not have to watch charts. A stop sells if the price falls through your level. A trailing stop follows the price up and sells when it turns, locking in the gain. A limit buys or sells only at your price. A DCA order buys the same amount on a schedule you pick, like every week. Once you set one, it runs on its own from your account. Every trade here is the same swap underneath. What changes is when it runs and how the size arrives. The swap page shows these as tabs; this page is what each one does and when to reach for it. They fall into five groups.
One order, then it runs on its own. Everything except a market swap rests against your account and fires unattended when its moment comes. Switching one on goes through the same checks as pressing Run. See Running it without you. The self-signing wallet has no equivalent, so these appear only for your account.

Buy or sell now

Market

A market price line with the current price marked; a single fill lands on it labelled 'filled now'.

A market order swaps straight away, in one transaction, at whatever the price is.

A market order swaps now. You set how much price movement you will tolerate between quoting and settling, and it takes the market as it stands, without resting or waiting.

Wait for a price

These rest until the market comes to a level you set, then run. Each rebuilds and re-prices its swap at the moment it fires, so one can wait for days without going stale.

Limit

A price line drifting down to a dashed 'your price' level, where it fills.

A limit order rests until the market reaches your price, then fills there or at any better price.

Name the price you are willing to trade at, and wait. When the market gets there, the order fills, at your price or at a better one if the book offers it. If the price never arrives, nothing happens, which is a real answer rather than an error: the price you asked for was better than the market.

Rung

A shaded band at a price level; the market fills while inside the band, and a 'waits — no chase' tag shows while it has run past.

A rung fills inside a band at your price and waits when the market runs past, instead of chasing it.

A limit that refuses to chase. It fills only within a band at your price, and when the market runs past the band it stops and waits rather than taking a worse fill. The band is the same price-impact cap you would put on the swap, so a rung trades at a level instead of sweeping through it. Set that cap on the trade first, because a rung with no cap is refused.

Stop

A price line falling through a red 'stop level'; a fill labelled 'sold at market' lands just below it.

A stop sells when the price falls through your level. The level is the trigger, and it sells at the market.

Protection against a fall. When the price drops through your level, the order fires and sells at the market. The level is the trigger, not a floor: once it fires, it takes what the market gives, which may be a little below the line. Use it to cap a loss without watching the screen.

Trailing stop

A price rising to a peak while a dashed stop ratchets up beneath it, then the price retreats onto the stop and fires.

A trailing stop follows the price up and never falls back, firing when the market retreats to it.

A stop that ratchets up behind the price and never moves down. As the market rises, the stop follows at the distance you set; when the market turns and falls back to it, it fires. It locks in a gain that keeps growing while the price does, without you moving the level by hand.

Break up a large size

A large order against a pool that cannot absorb it in one go should arrive in pieces. These three do that in different ways. (Whether splitting actually saves money is a separate question. See Splitting a big trade.)

Iceberg

A tall faint bar marked 'your full size' with only a small bright slice visible at a time, filling in steps at a price level.

An iceberg is a limit that only ever shows a small slice at once, so the full size is never on the book.

A limit for a size too large to reveal. It rests at your price like an ordinary limit, but only a small slice is ever exposed at once; as each slice fills, the next surfaces. The slice cap is the trade’s price-impact bound, and partial fills are always on, so the whole size never sits on the book advertising itself.

TWAP

Equal time intervals t1 to t6, each firing one slice at wherever the price is.

A TWAP breaks the size into equal slices and fires one at the market each interval, over time.

Spread the size over time. A TWAP cuts your order into equal slices and fires one every interval, at the market, until it is done, so a large order lands as a stream rather than a single print. It waits on the clock, not a price: each slice is bounded by your slippage tolerance, not by a limit. Reach for it to get in or out over a window regardless of where the price sits.

Grid

Evenly spaced rungs between a low and a high; the price oscillates and fills each rung it crosses.

A grid lays a ladder of rungs across a price range and works the whole band as the price moves through it.

For a price that is moving sideways. A grid spreads your size across evenly spaced rungs between a low and a high you set. Each rung is a small rung order in its own slice of the range, so the position builds across the whole band as the price wanders through it, instead of committing at one price.

Set an exit and a floor together

Bracket

An entry level with a green take-profit above and a red stop below; the price fills the entry, reaches the target, and the stop cancels.

A bracket places an entry with a take-profit above it and a stop below. A fill on one cancels the other.

Three orders in one. The entry buys at your price; a take-profit above it and a stop below it both dispose of what the entry bought. The two protectors point at the entry, so whichever fires first frees the other. You set an exit and a floor in a single decision, and only one of them ever fires.

Buy on a schedule

DCA

A clock and equal 'same size' buys at fixed intervals across days, regardless of the price line above them.

DCA buys the same size on a repeating schedule, whatever the price is that day.

DCA is a standing arrangement rather than a resting order. The swap you set up is saved and switched on as a schedule, and it buys the same size every interval (daily, weekly, or whatever you pick), regardless of the price, until you switch it off. It is a schedule, so it fires unattended and is switched off from the schedules page rather than cancelled like a resting order.

They are all the same machine

None of these is a special contract. Underneath, each order is a trigger (a price, a band, a trail or a clock) attached to an ordinary swap, and the trade that runs is priced and approved at the moment it fires. That is why a new shape is a new combination of the same parts rather than a new thing to trust, and why the price floor on every fill is the same one enforced on the network for a swap you press yourself.
Two neighbouring pages: Sizing a trade for how a size is chosen across pools, and Bounds on a trade for the caps a rung and an iceberg reuse as their band and slice.