I'm a relative newbie to investing, so read this with a grain of salt.

First, let's establish some premises key to understanding the differences between the various types orders:

• All types of orders—whether market, limit, stop, stop-market (also called stop-loss), or stop-limit—are not instant. They are placed in a queue in the market and executed in a certain order (I'm not sure if it's always on a first-come-first-serve basis; can someone confirm?¹)

I think you may have some misunderstandings:

• Limit order aren't simply triggers at certain price thresholds; that's a stop order. Limit orders are more conditional, namely when the price is the same or better. The purpose of limit orders are to maximize gain whereas with stop orders, it's to minimize loss.

• In your $50 example,