What Are Matching Orders?
Matching orders is the process by which a securities exchange pairs one or more unsolicited buy orders to one or more sell orders to make trades. This can be contrasted with requests for a quote (RFQ) in a security to proceed with a trade.
If one investor wants to buy a quantity of stock and another wants to sell the same quantity at the same price, their orders match, and a transaction is effected. The work of pairing these orders is the process of order matching whereby exchanges identify buy orders, or bids, with corresponding sell orders, or asks, to execute them.
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Generally, a buy order and a sell order are compatible if the maximum price of the buy order matches or exceeds the minimum price of the sell order.