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 fills, it becomes a ‘trade’ and needs to ‘settle’. Settlement is when the legal ownership of shares is officially transferred from one shareholder to another.

Settlement dates are commonly described as T+1, T+2, T+3, and so on. ‘T’ stands for ‘trade date’ (the date your order fills), and the number indicates how many business days the trade will take to settle. Australian and NZ trades take two business days, while US trades take one business day.

To settle a trade, the associated money and shares go through an intermediary. For NZ trades, this is the NZX Clearing House. Australian and US trades are settled with a broker dealer (CMC Markets in Australia and DriveWealth in the US). Once the intermediary receives the cash and the shares, they pass them on to the buyer and seller, and the trade is considered settled.

You don’t need to do anything during this process. You can check the settlement status of your trade by going to Wallet > Transaction history and selecting your order.

If you have any questions, get in touch with us at help@sharesies.co.nz.