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Experts know there are 5 different types of order you need to know about when it comes to trading stocks, and here is the skinny on each type of trade:

1. Market Order. A market order is a request to purchase or sell a stock at the current market price. Market orders are pretty much the standard stock purchase order.

One thing to keep in mind with a market order is the fact that you don’t control how much you pay for your stock purchase or sale; the market does. This shortcoming can be met with a limit order.

2. A limit order. Limit orders are orders to buy or sell at a particular price. This is good if you really need to get the price you specify, or if the market is choppy - moving up and down too fast to keep up with, but you don’t want to get caught on a sudden change in market direction.

Sometimes your broker will charge a bit more for limit orders, since they can often remain unfilled, and it requires more of their time to monitor and process the order.

3. Stop Orders. A stop order is a market order that only gets activated if a condition is met. For example, the most common stop order is the stop loss, which opens a market sell order if the financial instrument trades at a certain price or lower.

4. A stop-limit order. This is just like the stop order, but with a set price. For example, you set a stop limit sell on IBM at 100. IBM drops to 100, and your “sell at 100″ order is activated, but if IBM drops to 99 and continues to drop, your order may never be filled.

5. Trailing Stop. Basically, this is a stop order based on a percentage change in the market price.

These order types are essential when you’re mastering market stock trading, because the order type will control how much money you make.

Simply put, some orders perform better than all the others in a certain market condition. For example, in October 1987 (Black Monday), stop limit orders caused many people to get caught with huge loses on their hands.

To master the order types and knowing when to use each type, you should practice paper trading without real money, until you understand how the order types operate, and how they affect profitability.

Once each order type becomes second nature to you, you can switch to a real trading account with real money, and trade with confidence, knowing you have mastery over all the order types.

It does not take long before you will be on par with the professional traders, who trade with the precise order type with every trade they make. And remember, these order types work in all markets, including shares, options, commodities and foreign exchange markets.