How online share quotes work

What happens when you place an online share deal and why quotes might not always be available?  

Let’s look behind the scenes at online share dealing and what you can do if there’s no price quote returned.

Instant quotes to deal in shares are only available during market hours. For the UK this means between 8am and 4.30pm on business days. For the US and Canada, the markets are open between 2.30pm and 9pm UK time on business days and on some UK bank holidays.

Placing an online share deal

Once you’ve chosen your stock, select the account you want to deal in, whether to buy or sell, and the order type which is either ‘At best’ or ‘Limit’.

We’ll explain a Limit order later in this video, but in terms of ‘At Best’, that means you want to deal straight away at the best price currently available.

Once you select At Best and click ‘Get quote’ you should see a price pop up. You’ve normally got around 15 seconds to accept this price, but this time can reduce during periods of market volatility. If you accept the price your order is confirmed, but if you do nothing the quote expires.

Who’s providing the quotes?

When you request a quote to deal in shares, we check the price available from a panel of Retail Service Providers. Also called market makers, these are firms who provide liquidity by offering instant prices in a range of stocks. We take the best price from the panel of retail service providers and that’s the quote you’ll be shown on your order screen.

Will I always get a quote?

There are a few situations where an online quote might not be returned. Fortunately, there are some ways around this.

Retail service providers sometimes need to restrict quote sizes to manage their risk, so they won’t always be able to offer an unlimited number of shares.

The size and availability of online quotes will depend on various factors including what’s happening in the market, stock specific news flow or the size of the company that you’re trying to deal in.  You should normally be able to get quotes in the larger, and therefore more liquid stocks such as the FTSE 100 companies, but the availability of quotes can still be affected for these stocks when market volatility is high.

Shares also have ‘Auction’ periods. These are points in the day where buyers and sellers are matched at a single price and during this time online price quotes will not be available.

There are three types of auction:

• The Opening auction runs daily Monday to Friday from 7.50am to 8am and it determines the opening price of a stock
• The Intra-day auction runs daily Monday to Friday and can happen when a stock sees significant price movement.  
• The Closing auction runs daily Monday to Friday from 4.30pm until 4.35pm and this forms the official closing price of a stock

What should you do if there is no quote available?

If there is no quote available, the easiest thing to do is to place a Limit order online. This is only available on UK stocks.  

A limit order is an instruction to buy or sell a share at a specified price or better. You can place a limit order on the ‘Buy and sell’ page for most UK shares. In the ‘Order type’ drop-down menu, just choose ‘Limit’. Limit orders can be placed when the market is open but you can also place one when the market is closed, so our systems will automatically deal your order if the price reaches your specified level when the market next opens.

You can keep a limit order in place for up to 90 calendar days. During that time, you can amend or cancel the order as long as it isn’t in the process of being executed.

Keep in mind that we can’t guarantee that your limit order will be executed. Also, if the investment you’re dealing in lacks liquidity, we may only be able to execute part of your order on a given day.

If you would prefer to place your order straight away you can phone our Dealing Services team who will say if your order can be done straight away or if you may need to place a limit order.

Market volatility

The stock markets can be volatile, and we saw good examples of this on the day of the EU referendum result in 2016 and with news of the first successful Covid-19 vaccine in 2020. Often when news like this breaks the market moves very fast and this can affect the availability of quotes on certain stocks. 

We’ll try our best to provide an online quote for your order, but keep in mind retail service providers may reduce or remove quotes in times of extreme volatility.