Introduction

After market orders (or AMOs) are orders that are placed after the stock market is closed.It’s important to note that the orders are just “placed” and not executed. Orders can only be executed during the market hours (that is 9:07-3:30 pm). We will talk more about this in a bit. 

Before understanding AMO, you need to know about the market windows. For Indian equity market, there are 4 windows of time:

1. Pre-Market: which is 9:00-9:15 in the morning, during which stock exchanges accept orders for price discovery 
2. Regular market: are 9:15-3:30 in the afternoon. This when regular buying and selling happens.
3. Post market: where settlement of trades happen among brokers.
4. After market: from 4: pm to the next day 9:00

After Market Orders are designed for busy people.

The number of people using AMO has gone up significantly in recent years.

Why? Because our lives are getting busier and a lot of people are not available during the regular market hours for one reason or the other. For example, people who have meetings all day and can not keep track of the market or those who have busy work schedules.

Most of the traders I work with are typically working professionals who research their trades/stocks at night and place their orders in advance.

Every broker is different

Every broker has a different set of rules for processing after-market orders and they keep changing it. Since I cannot take every broker’s example, I will stick to Zerodha for most of the session.

How does AMO work?

So, let’s say, at midnight, you place an after-market order for buying a stock. Your order will be sent to Zerodha’s servers up and it will stay there until 8:59 am- along with thousands of other AMO orders.

After validating the margins etc., Zerodha will fire these orders to the stock exchange exactly at 9:00 am -when the pre-market opens.

Some of these orders, if matched by the exchange will be filled during pre-market itself- that is around 9:08 am; others will become similar to a regular order you place during market hours and there will be no difference.

Next comes the time-slot for placing AMOs. The time-slot depends on exactly when the servers of the brokers are down for maintenance.

For example, Zerodha allows you to place after market orders in the following time slots.

Upstox has given these two time-slots: 6:30 PM to 12:00 AM and 4:00 am to 9:00 am. Kotak has given three time-slots (4:14 pm-9:30 pm, 10:30 pm-7:30 am and 8:30 am-9:00 am). You might want to call your broker for getting the latest time-slots.

Most of the brokers allow you to place the AMO order either online or by calling their call centers. There might be some additional charges for call-n-trade though.

What’s Allowed, What’s Not allowed in Zerodha

Zerodha allows after-market orders in all segments : Cash, F&O, currency and MCX commodities.

All the product types are allowed:

• CNC: you can place orders for delivery
• MIS: you can place order for intraday
• NRML: Or you can take deliveries in futures and options

When it comes to order types: Bracket order, cover order and stop loss orders are NOT allowed. This is a very commonly asked question and so I hope you got it.

When it comes to price

In Zerodha, you can place both Limit and Market orders- no problem there. However, every broker has different rules about it.

Some brokers do not allow market price orders and some brokers have restrictions over the Limit price being within a certain % range of the previous closing price.

For example, a broker can say that for a stock that closed at 100 the previous day, you can only place orders within 5%.

Frequently Asked Questions (Based on Zerodha as a broker)

1. Bracket and cover orders: Are they allowed?
   • This is a very common question and the answer is NO.
   • You can not place bracket or cover orders.
   • I strongly discourage to use AMO for intraday trading anyway
2. Does “After market” mean that I can buy and sell even after market is closed?
   • What you have to understand is that AMO only means you can place the order. The order will be just sitting there waiting for the exchange to open and will be executed only during market hours.
3. Why are Stop Loss orders not allowed?
   • There are some technical reasons for that. Stop loss orders are not allowed during the pre-market and since the AMO orders are fired during the pre-market, they don’t allow SL orders.
4. Can AMO be placed during market orders?
   • Answer is NO for all segments, except commodities.
5. My AMO gets cancelled & I get the error “Admin stopped AMO”
   • AMO orders can’t be placed during market hours and if they are placed, the order gets rejected and the above error is displayed.
6. What about the error “ Error ““16418 : Order with Invalid attributes rejected by the system”
   This error occurs if an Aftermarket Order [AMO] is placed during the pre-market hours.
7. Are AMO accepted on weekends?”
   Yes, they are accepted.
8. Are AMOs only for existing holdings or positions?
   No, you can also take fresh positions using AMOs.

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