Your order will be placed into a queue of other buyers or sellers, and order processing times might be affected by things such as:

Market and limit orders for Australian or NZ shares may be sent to market individually, or sent to market with similar orders placed by other investors—this is called ‘aggregation’. When orders are aggregated, they retain their priority. If an aggregated order only partially fills, and your order was placed first, this means it’ll be filled first.

Sharesies places orders for investments listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZX) and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) during the pre-open phase—but no trades occur until the exchange reopens.

Investments that aren’t traded frequently can remain pending, or unfilled, for an unknown amount of time.

An order might partially fill over multiple trades instead of completing all in one go—or, it might not complete in full at all. You can usually cancel a partially filled order.

Partially filled orders are most common with shares that aren’t traded as frequently as others (including limit orders), orders for large amounts, or when the price of an investment moves significantly in a short space of time.

Buy or sell limit orders for Australian, New Zealand, or US investments will wait on-market for up to 30 calendar days for the limit price to be reached. If the limit price isn’t met within 30 calendar days, the limit order is cancelled.

For cancelled buy limit orders, the money is returned to your Sharesies Wallet.

For cancelled sell limit orders, the investment stays in your Portfolio.

If your limit order is cancelled, you can place it again.

If you’ve opted in to extended US trading hours, an extended-hours order is one that has the opportunity to fill before, during, and after regular US market hours.

An extended-hours order will only stay on the market until the end of the post-market session on one trading day (unless it fills). Any part of the order that hasn't filled by the end of the post-market session will be cancelled. If you like, you can place the order again.

Although we don’t guarantee an order can always be cancelled, you may be able to cancel an order that hasn’t yet been filled by finding the investment in your Portfolio and selecting View order > Cancel order.

When an order is cancelled, we look to make the money available in your Sharesies Wallet as soon as we can. If it’s cancelled when the market is closed, the money should land in your Sharesies Wallet once the market next reopens. You’ll receive the money back into your Sharesies Wallet in the currency placed when buying an investment, minus any applicable exchange fees.

Once your order has been processed, it becomes a trade and is subject to a ‘T+2 settlement’ period. 'T' being the trade date, is when your order is completed on market. The '+2' is the settlement date which is usually two business days after the trade date.

Your trade gets settled through an intermediary. In NZ, this is the NZX Clearing House, while Australian and US trades are settled with a broker dealer (CMC Markets in Australia and DriveWealth in the US). These intermediaries sit between Sharesies and the buyer or seller on the other side of your trade. They’re responsible for making sure trades settle and manages the risk of having people trading with each other.

To settle a Sharesies buy trade, we give the intermediary your cash to pay for the trade, and the seller on the other side of the trade gives the intermediary their shares. Once the intermediary receives the cash and the shares, they pass them on to the buyer and seller and the trade is considered settled. This usually happens two business days after the trade date—hence the name T+2 settlement.

There’s nothing more you need to do during this process—your order will show as completed in your Portfolio.