By Matt Connor
Time in Force Explained: Day, GTC, IOC, FOK
What is time in force? Day, GTC, IOC and FOK decide how long your order stays live and what counts as a fill, plus the auction cutoffs that end it.
Time in force is the field on an order ticket that answers one question: how long should this order stay live? The order type sets the price. Time in force sets the clock, and the fill condition attached to it. Every stock and options ticket carries both fields, and the default your platform fills in for you is still a choice.
What is time in force in trading?
An order carries two independent settings. The first is price. A market order takes whatever the book offers; a limit order names the worst price you will accept. The market order vs limit order guide covers that half in detail.
The second is duration. Time in force tells the venue how long the unfilled part of your order keeps working, and whether a partial fill is acceptable on the way. A limit to buy 500 shares at $50 carries both instructions at once: the price, and the lifetime. Change the lifetime and you have sent a different order, even with the price untouched.
The vocabulary is short. Four durations cover almost every ticket a retail platform will show: day, good-til-canceled, good-til-date, and the instant-only pair of immediate-or-cancel and fill-or-kill. A few execution qualifiers sit on top of those, and the auction instructions replace the duration entirely.
Day orders, GTC and good-til-date
Day. The order works until the end of the regular session, and any unfilled quantity is cancelled at the close. This is the default on nearly every retail platform. A day order entered at 10:00 a.m. and unfilled at 4:00 p.m. stops existing. Nothing carries into tomorrow.
Good-til-canceled (GTC). The order rests across sessions until it fills or you pull it. US equity exchanges largely work in day orders, which means a GTC order usually lives at your broker and gets re-entered each morning. Queue position resets with it: yesterday's place in line at your price is gone.
Good-til-date (GTD). GTC with an expiry you name. Useful when the reason for the order has a shelf life.
Extended-hours day. Some platforms offer a duration that keeps a day order working through the pre-market and after-hours windows instead of stopping at 4:00 p.m.
A day order's working window maps onto a very uneven distribution of trading. The panel below splits a full month of SPY volume across the ET clock, from the 4:00 a.m. start of the pre-market through the 8:00 p.m. end of the after-hours session.
The exact SQL behind every number
SELECT
formatDateTime(toStartOfHour(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')), '%H:%i') AS et_time,
round(100 * sum(volume) / sum(sum(volume)) OVER (), 2) AS pct_of_volume
FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
WHERE ticker = 'SPY'
AND window_start >= toDateTime('2026-06-01 08:00:00', 'UTC')
AND window_start < toDateTime('2026-07-01 00:00:00', 'UTC')
GROUP BY et_time
ORDER BY et_timeOver June 2026, the 04:00 hour carried 0.27% of SPY's monthly share volume. The 09:00 hour, which opens with the 9:30 bell, took 9.32%. The 16:00 hour is a hybrid: it holds the closing auction print alongside the opening stretch of after-hours trading, and it came to 14.42%. A plain day order is alive for the hump in the middle of that chart and absent from the tails on either side.
What happens to a GTC order after a split or a dividend?
A GTC order can sit for weeks, which gives corporate actions time to reach it. Two handlings are common. Some brokers cancel every open GTC order on a stock when it goes ex-dividend or when a split takes effect. Others adjust the resting limit price and the quantity to match the new share count. Both approaches are defensible. They are not the same, and the ticket does not tell you which one applies to your account.
Most brokers also cap GTC duration outright, commonly at 60 to 90 calendar days, after which the order expires on its own. An order set and forgotten in March is often gone by June without the market ever having touched it.
The split case is the sharper one. A 1-for-10 reverse split turns 100 shares into 10 and multiplies the reference price by ten on the same morning. A resting buy limit at $2 against the old shares is meaningless against the new ones. Splits are not rare events. The panel counts every split on the US tape, month by month.
The exact SQL behind every number
SELECT
formatDateTime(toStartOfMonth(execution_date), '%Y-%m') AS month,
countDistinctIf(id, toFloat64(split_to) > toFloat64(split_from)) AS forward_splits,
countDistinctIf(id, toFloat64(split_to) < toFloat64(split_from)) AS reverse_splits
FROM global_markets.stocks_splits
WHERE execution_date >= toDate('2025-08-01')
AND execution_date < toDate('2026-08-01')
GROUP BY month
ORDER BY monthThe window runs from 2025-08 through 2026-07. In 2026-07 the tape recorded 45 forward splits and 119 reverse splits. Each of those dates is a morning on which a resting order in that name was either cancelled or rewritten, and the reader who set it weeks earlier finds out afterwards.
What is the difference between IOC and FOK?
Immediate-or-cancel and fill-or-kill are durations as well. Their duration is an instant.
Immediate-or-cancel (IOC). Take whatever quantity is available at your limit right now, cancel the rest. Partial fills are the expected outcome. An IOC for 5,000 shares that finds 800 available fills 800; the remaining 4,200 are cancelled on the spot.
Fill-or-kill (FOK). The entire quantity, immediately, or nothing at all. That same order finding 800 shares available fills zero.
All-or-none (AON). The entire quantity, but patient. An AON order waits for the full size rather than cancelling, which means it needs a duration underneath it: AON for the day, or AON good-til-canceled.
Whether fill-or-kill is realistic depends on your size against the size the market actually trades in that name. The panel below takes one mid-morning hour on a single pinned date and measures the prints.
The exact SQL behind every number
SELECT
ticker AS symbol,
round(avg(size), 0) AS avg_print_shares,
round(100 * countIf(size >= 1000) / count(), 2) AS large_print_pct
FROM global_markets.stocks_trades
WHERE ticker IN ('SPY', 'AAPL', 'NVDA', 'MSFT', 'KO')
AND sip_timestamp >= toDateTime('2026-06-10 14:00:00', 'UTC')
AND sip_timestamp < toDateTime('2026-06-10 15:00:00', 'UTC')
AND size > 0
GROUP BY ticker
ORDER BY large_print_pct DESCAcross that hour, NVDA put the largest share of its prints at 1,000 shares or more, at 0.32% of trades, with an average print of 38 shares. At the other end of the five, MSFT put 0.1% of its prints in that bracket. Send a fill-or-kill for 5,000 shares into a tape where the typical print is a few hundred, and the likely outcome is a cancellation rather than a fill.
Market-on-close and limit-on-close: the auction instructions
Two instructions name no duration at all. They name an event.
Market-on-close (MOC) submits the order into the closing auction, filling at the official closing price. Limit-on-close (LOC) does the same with a price ceiling or floor, participating only when the closing price lands at or better than the limit. The morning counterparts are market-on-open and limit-on-open, which route into the opening cross.
The catch is the cutoff. On the major US primary listing venues, entry for MOC and LOC closes at 3:50 p.m. ET, and past that point the order cannot be cancelled or amended except to correct a bona fide error. The opening equivalents cut off around 9:28 a.m. ET. For the final stretch you are committed to whatever the cross prints. The closing auction and opening auction guides walk through how each cross is computed.
What traders get for surrendering the exit is a print at the official closing price. The panel measures the tape from 3:45 p.m. ET through the close, averaged across a month of SPY sessions.
The exact SQL behind every number
SELECT
formatDateTime(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York'), '%H:%i') AS et_time,
round(sum(volume) / countDistinct(toDate(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York'))) / 1e6, 2) AS volume_millions
FROM global_markets.delayed_stocks_minute_aggs
WHERE ticker = 'SPY'
AND window_start >= toDateTime('2026-06-01 08:00:00', 'UTC')
AND window_start < toDateTime('2026-07-01 00:00:00', 'UTC')
AND (toHour(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York')) * 60
+ toMinute(toTimeZone(window_start, 'America/New_York'))) BETWEEN 945 AND 960
GROUP BY et_time
ORDER BY et_timeThe panel reads minute by minute. The 15:45 bar averaged 0.22 million SPY shares per session, and the 16:00 bar averaged 0.39 million. The cross itself is not one more minute of continuous trading. It is a single matched event at one official price, and an MOC or LOC ticket is a request to be inside it. The 3:50 p.m. cutoff is what that request costs.
Time in force outside regular hours
Extended-hours sessions change the rules. Most venues accept limit orders only outside 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET, and a day order entered for the regular session does not carry into the after-hours window on its own. The after hours and premarket trading guide covers those windows in detail. The hourly panel above shows the thinness the limit-only rule is written around: the 19:00 hour accounted for 0.17% of the month's SPY volume.
Options carry a separate wrinkle. The last moment a contract can be traded runs on a different clock from the underlying stock's, and an expiring option has a hard cutoff that no duration setting extends. The guide to when options stop trading has the specifics.
Reading a ticket: duration plus qualifier
- Day, no qualifier: works until the close, partial fills allowed. The everyday default.
- Day with IOC: takes what is available in that instant, cancels the rest. Nothing rests on the book.
- Day with FOK: the whole quantity in that instant, or nothing. Nothing rests on the book.
- Day with AON: the whole quantity, waiting until the close for it.
- GTC with AON: the whole quantity, waiting across sessions until the broker's expiry.
- GTD, no qualifier: partial fills allowed, working until the date you named.
- MOC or LOC: no duration field. The auction is the instruction, and 3:50 p.m. ET is the last moment to change your mind.
Platform names for these vary. The underlying instruction set does not, and matching the vocabulary on your screen to this list is usually a one-minute exercise.
FAQ
What does time in force mean on an order?
Time in force is the instruction that sets how long an order stays working before it is cancelled automatically. It is separate from the order type, which sets the price. A single ticket carries both fields.
What is the difference between a day order and a GTC order?
A day order is cancelled at the end of the regular session if it has not filled. A good-til-canceled order keeps working across sessions until it fills or you cancel it, and in any case no longer than the broker's own expiry limit.
Does a GTC order stay open forever?
No. Most brokers cap GTC orders at roughly 60 to 90 calendar days, and many also cancel them when the stock goes ex-dividend or completes a split. The exact handling varies by broker and is written into the account agreement.
What is the difference between IOC and FOK?
An immediate-or-cancel order fills whatever quantity is available right now and cancels the remainder, which makes a partial fill normal. A fill-or-kill order requires the entire quantity immediately; anything less and nothing trades at all.
Can you cancel a market-on-close order?
Not after the venue's cutoff, which is 3:50 p.m. ET on the major US primary listing exchanges. Before that time an MOC order can be entered or pulled like any other. After it, only a genuine error correction is accepted.
Every panel here ships with the SQL that produced it. Open one and see exactly how the number was counted. To measure how a specific name's tape behaves in the closing minutes, ask the question in plain English on the Strasmore terminal.