Your first order: market vs limit

The order book

Every listed share has an order book: a list of what people are willing to pay (bids) and what holders are asking (offers), each with a quantity. The highest bid and the lowest offer are the bid and ask your broker app shows. The gap between them is the spread. On a busy share like Safaricom the spread is a few cents; on a share that trades a few thousand shares a day it can be a shilling or more.

A trade happens when a bid and an offer meet. The price at which the last trade happened is the last traded price, and the last one of the day becomes the close you see on KenyaStocks. Everything below is about how your order joins that book.

A market order

A market order says: fill me now, at whatever the book offers. If you are buying, it matches the lowest offer first; if that offer is smaller than your quantity, it moves to the next one up, and so on. You are almost certain to get filled, but you do not control the price. On a share with a wide spread or thin volume, a market order for a large quantity can walk up the book and fill several steps above the last traded price.

• Fills fast during the continuous session if anyone is offering.
• Price is uncertain: you pay the offers as they stand, which may differ from the close shown here.
• Cannot be entered in the pre-open on some broker systems; check what your app allows before 9.30 am.

A limit order

A limit order says: fill me at this price or better, and not otherwise. A buy limit at KES 17.50 fills at 17.50 or lower; a sell limit at KES 18.00 fills at 18.00 or higher. If nobody is willing to trade at your price, the order sits in the book waiting. It may fill later in the day, fill partly, or expire unfilled.

• Price is certain, quantity is not: you may get some, all or none of the shares.
• Sits in the queue behind earlier orders at the same price; the book fills in price then time order.
• Validity: many broker apps treat an order as good for the day and cancel it at the close; some let you set a longer life. Ask your broker how long an unfilled order stays open.

On thinly traded counters, where a single market order can move the price several steps, limit orders are the common choice because they cap what you pay. This is a description of how the two order types behave, not advice about any share.

A worked example

Say you have KES 5,000 and a share last traded at KES 17.90. Fees on a trade under KES 100,000 come to about 2.1 % (see fees), so the money available for shares is roughly 5,000 ÷ 1.021 ≈ KES 4,897. That buys 273 shares at 17.90 (273 × 17.90 = KES 4,886.70), with fees of about KES 103 on top.

Neither outcome is wrong. The market order bought certainty of ownership for 73 shares at ten cents more; the limit order bought certainty of price at the risk of no trade. Since August 2025 you are not tied to multiples of 100, so 273 is a perfectly normal quantity.

Rules that decide whether it fills

1. 1

   Sessions

   Orders are collected from 9.00 to 9.30 am in the pre-open, where an opening price is worked out but nothing executes. From 9.30 am to 3.00 pm orders match continuously. At 3.00 pm the session ends and closing prices are published. There is no after-hours session for retail investors.

2. 2

   The 10 % band

   A share's price may not move more than 10 % in a session from the previous session's reference price. An order priced outside the band is rejected. This is why a big news day can end with a share pinned at its limit and a queue of unfilled orders.

3. 3

   Any quantity

   From 1 August 2025 the NSE abolished the 100-share minimum and closed the odd-lot board, so all quantities trade in one order book.

4. 4

   Partial fills

   A limit order for 1,000 shares can fill 400 today and stay open for the rest. Each fill is a separate trade with its own fees; your contract note lists them.

5. 5

   Settlement

   The NSE settles on T+3. Shares you buy on Monday reach your CDS account on Thursday; money from a sale is available on the third working day. Weekends and public holidays do not count, so a sale on Thursday settles the following Tuesday.

After the fill

You receive a contract note by email: quantity, price, each levy and the total. Keep it. Until settlement the shares show as pending in the app; from T+3 they appear in your CDS statement. Email statements from CDSC are free; the monthly statement arrives only in months with activity.

Compare the price on the contract note with the day's close on the company page. They will differ slightly on most days, and that gap is the spread and the intraday movement, not a mistake. KenyaStocks shows end-of-day prices from Mansa Markets with the close date on every data view.

Where to look next

The session times and the 2026 holiday calendar are in NSE trading hours and holidays. Fees and the licensed brokers are in NSE stockbrokers: list and fees. To read the figures on a company page before you order, see How to read a company page.