How to Place a Stock Order: Executing Your First Trade

When you put an order in to your broker, you can choose how long the order stays open. By default, orders are day orders , meaning that they are valid until the end of the trading day. Good-'til-canceled orders remain open until you actually go in and cancel them.

How to Cancel an Order

There might come a time when you put in an order that you decide you don't want to go through with. If the order has not yet been executed, canceling it is usually as simple as selecting the "cancel" option online or calling your broker. Remember that once the order does go through, if you're not happy with your investment, you can't take it back to the store it came from. So make sure that you seriously consider all of the implications involved in placing a stock order.

What About After-Hours Trading?

In recent years, after-hours trading has opened its doors to individual investors. With the lower trading volumes and different conditions that investors encounter in after-hours trading, it's not advisable for you to fiddle with after-hours trading as a new investor until you really know what you're doing.

(To learn more about the after-hours market, check out these articles on TheStreet.com: An Extended-Hours Trading Primer, Booyah Breakdown: After Hours and Will I Get Burned in Extended-Hours Trading?.)

Happy investing!