Yesterday, I decided to try and place a market order to buy a stock outside regular market hours. Since I work full time and I'm not permitted to use the computer at work for stock trading at any time, I don't have access to the market during trading hours. So I logged in to my Questrade account, and decided to place a Good Till Cancelled (GTC) market order. This means that the order stands until it is fulfilled, or until you cancel it yourself. You can place a GTC type of order at any time, so that means that my buy order will take place Monday morning, when the market opens (since it is a market order, meaning buy at whatever the going price is at the time). I left the Preferred ECN setting on AUTO, and I checked off "All or none", meaning that the order should buy all shares at once, or wait until doing so is possible.
When I placed my order, I was met with the error: "Order rejected" and "ECN not supported". I tried once again, and got the same error. I decided to go on Questrade's live help chat to see if they could help me with the error. After waiting a while, the Questrade employee looked into my order history, and told me to try placing the order without "All or none" checked off. When I tried this suggestion, the order was accepted and in the "Queued" state. Monday after work, I should have my new stock.
Update: Turns out Monday after work, my order was rejected again with the error "ECN rejected". I Googled for this error and found that someone else had the same problem when placing a market order outside market hours. It was theorized that market orders are only meant to be executed immediately, so it was no surprise that a market order failed outside trading hours, even when set to GTC. I tried placing a limit order as GTC this time, set to the stock's closing price today. Tuesday after work, I should have my stock.
For information on Questrade's post-market trading policies, there is information at this link.
Update: Order succeeded.
Update: I had similar issues when trying to sell a stock outside market hours. I did everything I mentioned above in this blog post, and yet my orders were still being rejected instantly. I had been setting a limit order to sell at the closing price of that day, but I tried setting the limit price one cent higher than the closing price, and it finally worked. I came home the next day after work to find that the order had been filled, only at a different price than my limit price. Luckily my shares sold for slightly higher than I had put. All in all, very weird. I don't really like doing this trading outside market hours, but I guess I have no choice.
