Market If Touched (MIT)

What Market If Touched (MIT) means

A market if touched order specifies a trigger level and, when the market trades there, releases a market order. Its orientation is the same as a limit order and the opposite of a stop: a buy MIT is placed below the current price and a sell MIT above it. The trader is therefore anticipating a reversal at the level, exactly as with a limit order, but has chosen certainty of execution over certainty of price once the level is reached.

That is the whole point of the order type. A resting buy limit at a level may go unfilled if price touches the level briefly and there is a queue ahead of it; a buy MIT at the same level converts to a market order the moment the level trades and will almost certainly be executed, possibly a tick or two worse. Traders who care more about being in the move than about a fraction of a pip prefer MIT, and those working large size at a price prefer the limit.

MIT originates in exchange-traded futures, where it is sometimes called a board order, and it is offered by many futures and multi-asset platforms today. Support across retail spot forex platforms is patchy, and where the type is missing traders approximate it by placing an ordinary limit order slightly beyond the level so that a brief touch is more likely to produce a fill. The approximation is imperfect, because it gives up a little price in every case rather than only in the cases where the queue would otherwise have blocked execution.