Immediate or Cancel (IOC)
An order that attempts to execute all or part of itself immediately and then cancels any unfilled portion of the order.
This order type attempts to purchase the largest possible number of an asset within its price range constraints. The order is either filled completely or partially filled with the available liquidity in the market at that exact moment in time and then canceled, returning any unspent capital, along with the assets it managed to acquire.
It bears some similarities with a fill or kill order in the sense that it is only active momentarily. However, IOC orders will execute under various fill prices, as long as they fall within the boundary conditions it was deployed in. If the available liquidity is insufficient to fully execute the order, it will execute the portion that it can, and then close.
This order type is primarily used when one wishes to purchase or sell an asset quickly within a certain boundary, but one is unwilling to go beyond this threshold. The main drawback of this order type is that given the instantaneous nature of the order, it might miss new liquidity batches that present themselves in the market even if they appear just seconds after the IOC order was deployed.
How it is used
Tomas wants to buy AXO tokens, he has a specific amount of ADA in mind that he would like to spend and also knows the maximum amount of ADA per AXO token he wants to pay. He however wants to execute this as fast as possible and only buy the available liquidity within this range. He doesn't want the order to sit in the order book - he just wants to buy what he can get. So he chooses an IOC order, which will assign him everything the market can provide at this price point. He executes his order and it starts being filled instantaneously, while all the ADA that he wasn't able to spend at this price point is returned to him. Now, with the remaining ADA, he can focus on finding the next best opportunity.
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