Why should the placement of market orders be restricted

1. Reason

Market orders are executed at uncertain real-time prices. When liquidity is insufficient and transactions are extremely inactive, sharp price fluctuations are prone to occur. You may therefore trade at a price much higher than the current bid price, or much lower than the current ask price and make losses.

For example:

You intend to buy the Luckin Coffee call option LKNCY220121C25000, but there is no pending sell order in the market. If there are no restrictions on the placement of market orders, your market order may be executed at any price. If the transaction price of your purchase is much higher than the best bid price at that time, you may face greater losses.

2. Restricted Scenarios

To prevent the execution prices of market orders from greatly deviating from expectations and causing losses, Futu temporarily deems the liquidity of the following scenarios as insufficient and will therefore disable the placement of market orders.

Notes:

2.1 The scenarios in the table above may be adjusted at any time due to changes in market conditions. Please refer to the information of the client's prompts.

2.2 To learn more about market orders, please go to the Help Center / U.S. Market / Order Type / What is market order.