Market if Touched

The market if touched order is an order that begins in standby, where its initial function is to wait until the trading price of an asset reaches a predefined level. Once the trigger price has been reached, even if only briefly, the market order becomes active and begins buying or selling, at then-present prices, irrespective of the market conditions.


The main benefit of this order type is to take advantage of the anticipated fall in price. However, its execution period is seemingly arbitrary, and may not fully capture the complexity of the market. For example, if one placed a market if touched order at -10% of the current trading price, it may be the case that the market goes down to -20% over the original price, yet because the market if touched order executes so quickly, traders might miss out on a considerable fraction of the potential returns. (To avoid such a scenario, traders might want to look into deploying a trailing market if touched order).


It’s worth noting that a market if touched order is nearly identical to a stop market order, but it’s differentiated by the fact that the trigger price is lower than the current trading price, as opposed to the opposite scenario. These order types are considered different primarily due to programming limitations on legacy systems. Many older platforms are unable to support two or more triggers at different possible execution ranges without breaking the system -  they were separated out of practicality, instead of for the benefit of the user.


Due to its underlying programmable swap design, Axo allows you to build orders under whichever conditions you want, but will then assign them names based on conventional terminology. In other words, as Axo can easily execute such triggers, it makes the distinction between various order types primarily academic and kept for the benefit of the traders still used to the traditional terminology.