What can happen if...

[deepinwonder]

...you use market orders instead of limit orders. Someone unfortunately paid $1000 per share for DO, first thing this morning. I don't know what is going to happen to that person or if it's some kind of mistake, but I've seen it before and often see people paying $1-$2 more per share than they have to. I did that once, myself.

If you're with a broker who won't let you use limits, upgrade your account or switch. Cramer keeps telling us that, listen!!

[xboilermaker]

Not the smartest investor, but that is one area where I have always listened to Cramer, after getting burned a few times over four years, not even realizing how to apply limit orders. Thanks Cramer!

I broke this rule and lucked out yesterday. Cramer's tech rally has been passing me by, and after reading a Robert Walberg article in MSN Money's Street Patrol, and doing more research on CSCO, decided at 3:58 that I must have now, to get in on the pullback. Luck was with me and it didn't spike. Got it at 2 cents under the week ending Aug. 11,2003. Don't mean to make a habit of rolling the dice in that context, just a compulsion of the moment, since I had been waiting to buy for weeks.

[dog]

Ouch! $1000?!?! Wow! What is it trading at now?

[optimus25]

For speculation I would definitely use limit orders. It saved me from getting into Baidu.com (BIDU) at $70 when it hit the secondary markets after the IPO. Oh wait...I could of made a ton of money. Aside from this example you truly can get burned if you use market orders. I only use those orders for my long term portfolio after I've watched the stock for a couple of months.