Purchasing/Selling Lindens - Limit Order

I am trying to understand how llimit buy and limit sell of Lindens works. I know that you can often get a better deal with a limit buy or limit sell, but I am having difficulty knowing what is a reasonable exchange rate to use. When looking at the 20 best open buy and sell orders, how do you decide where to prices yours?

For example, I need to purchase L$16,000 to pay my tier, which isn't due until Sunday. So If I wanted to put in a limit buy now for the Lindens I need on Sunday, how would I decide a reasonable exchange rate to use?

Same goes for selling. If I need to sell Lindens soon, to get US credit on my account before tier is due in a week or so, how do I decide what exchange rate to use for a limit sell?


I would appreciate any insight into this process.

Thanks,

If you look at the open buy and sell orders, the only one of interest is the first one with a very large remaining quantity (in the tens of millions). This is usually the first one in each list, but will sometimes be one or two lines down. That number represents orders that will be ahead of you if you place your order at the same price.

So, for example, looking at the open buy orders on the Lindex this moment, the very first entry is at L$269 per USD, with $64,562,806 in remaining quantity. Hence, if you were to place your buy order at 269, you'd have to wait for L$65M to be filled ahead of you. This is fine if you can afford to wait a few days. I think the maximum wait I've ever had using this method was 8 days, but it's usually closer to 1-4 days.

If you want to fill your order more quickly, then make a better offer. In this case, "better" means settling for fewer L$ for your 1$US. If you were to place your limit buy at L$268, you would go in front of those L$65M open orders, and would probably fill within a few hours.

Once you understand these basics, you can start looking at the top number in the opposing section (e.g. open sells when you're trying to buy), and learn to use that to get a feel for how long it will take. Also, you'll learn to recognize cases when the top line or two are only in the tens or hundreds of thousands, which usually means those are other people trying to squeeze ahead.

Kidd, thank you so much for the very clear explanation. I have had a limited buy order since Saturday morning. Due to your explanation, I will give it a few more days.

The exchange works by matching buyers and sellers - if you want to buy at a particular rate, you have to be matched with one or more sellers who want to sell at the same rate.

If you look at the open buy and sell orders you can see how much is on offer at which price. You can select the price you want to buy or sell at - but you need to take account of the amount on offer at the price if you want to trade quickly.

The screen also lets you put in buy/sell amounts and rates so you can compare limit and non-limit transactions before putting in a trade.

If you set a limit buy or sell at the top end, it will usually take 2-3 days to complete - depending on how active the market is. Pick a value below and it could be weeks - never. You can put in a trade and then if it is not executed within a certain time, then you can cancel it and try again at a different rate. You must also remember that trades are final - so if you put a trade in - e.g., a sell at a lower rate than you intended - and it executes immediately, you cannot cancel or roll back. So check what you are doing very carefully.

If you want to buy or sell immediately, then a limit transaction won't help you. There will almost always be a delay in executing a limit buy or sell as buyers are matched with sellers.

Ok, so looking at this list of open buy orders, the top of the list is:
L$269 / US$1.00 L$60,404,287

If I understand this, it means that $1 USD will buy L$269. That is the best deal going atm. There are orders waiting totaling L$60,404,287, which means my order at that price would be filled AFTER all of those orders. How long will it take for that many orders to get filled, approximately? I have no sense of this, not having done a limit buy before.

So if I want to squeak in ahead of those orders, but at a good rate, I would put my buy order at L$268 / US$1.00? Is that how it works? And how long would I have to wait to get that met?

Thanks for any further input or explanations - trying to figure out how this works so I don't accidentally screw myself over!

Absolutely correct, ignoring the 30 cent transaction fee.


The best way to judge that is to look at the sale side. Currently there's L$43M for sale at 259. Ignoring the price difference, this means that there are roughly 3 offers to buy for every 2 offers to sell. That's neither as bad as I've seen it (3-1 or 4-1) nor as good (1-1). A purely intuitive guess, based on my memory (with all the unreliability that implies) is 2-4 days. However, I can't guarantee it, and it's possible that someone who's done more careful tracking will have a more reliable estimate. (Again, I emphasize, this is vague memory, not hard data.)


With these numbers, I'd bet anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days. The same caveats apply.

How well do you get along with your landlord? If it's good enough that being a day or two late wouldn't be a big deal, then I'd go ahead with the 268 or 269 order, and tell the landlord that you've placed the order and will transfer the L$ as soon as it goes through.

If it's not that good, or you really want to be on time, then at this state of the game there are two possibilities. One is to put it in at 268 or 269, with the assumption that if it doesn't go through in time (say Thu. evening or Fri. morning), you'll cancel the order, place a last-minute market order, live with higher cost, and plan ahead next month. The second is to put it in at around 265-267, with high confidence that it will go through in time, a much smaller chance that you'll still have to do the cancel and market buy, but giving up a little bit of cost.

Either way, set a reminder to yourself to place a buy on the 20th of next month. Alternatively, buy two or three month's worth at a time, which will save on the 30 cent transaction fee.

Ok, plugging some numbers into the LindeX Exchange to make some comparisons reveals this:

Market buy: L$16,000 will cost me approximately $61.84 USD.

Limit buy: L$16,000 at exchange rate of L$268/L$1 will cost me $60.01 USD.

That is only a difference of $1.83!

What is the advantage to a limit buy, if you have to tie up your money and wait, rather than execute an immediate market buy and receive your Lindens right away? I suppose if you were making a bigger purchase....but you would still save at most just a few dollars. Is that really worth it?

Am I understanding this correctly?

I buy my L$ via Xstreet. Once my US$ are out into Xstreet, they are not in my bank account earning interest. So, if I do not need the L$ right away, then by waiting a few hours or a day, I can get a few more lindens.

It might only save you a *few* dollars in US$, but it can be a few hundred in L$, so that is where you have to decide if it is worth it to you.

If I tell you to give me a $100 bill and I'll either give you $100 worth of smaller bills right now or $110 worth in a few hours -- do you want the extra $10?

The L$ bid/ask spread is always almost exactly 3.5% So, yeah, for instant conversion one can pay that amount extra (give or take the US$0.40 per-trade commission on buys), but there's not going to be much waiting around at 268 when the lowest substantial buy order is at 269. Your order will fill the instant anybody places a market sell. I've never had a limit order within the spread fail to execute within a half-hour, and it's nearly instantaneous during peak hours.

What gets me is that some people have been flipping money in and out every few days to make a few pennies on the spread.

Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.

Yeah, I see your point. Send me that extra $10, please?!


I've never used XStreet SL to buy Lindens. Now that it is owned by the same company (LL), aren't they essentially the same? Or do you find that you make out a little better there? Are the fees the same?

Riddle me this.. Riddler.. how do you get the US$ into Slx to buy L$? I do not see a add to the US$ balance feature

I have consistently purchased my L$ at L$274-274.5 per US$ on Xstreet for the past month or so. That is up quite a bit from the L$267-268 via the LL website.



On the Currency Exchange page, click the link that says Deposit USD:

Ok, I tried it at L$275/$1 USD with a limit buy on XStreet SL. We'll see what happens!
This makes me nervous; I hope I did it correctly!

Question: when your limit buy or limit sell is successfully executed on SL or XStreet, do you receive a confirmation email to let you know?

Yes, XStreet sends emails. I only use XStreet for selling Lindens, so someone else will have to answer about SL.

A single sell order is often broken down into several transactions. In those cases, you'll receive an email for each one.

Yes, as Miles said, Xstreet will send an email for each part of your buy order as it is filled.

At L$274-274.5, none of my orders in the past month have taken more than a few hours, half day at the most -- so yours at L$275 should be fine. If you get real nervous and start getting close to your deadline for needing the money, you can always cancel the limit buy and just buy the rest at current exchange.

FYI - My order was filled overnight at L$275/$1 USD.

Thanks for all the help explaining how limit buying work, everyone. I feel much more comfortable with it now.

I wonder why the rates on XStreet SL are so much better than on the LindeX? Anyone have any theories?

now do the same with REAL money, like half a million L$ needed to purchase 65000m² in some higly popular mainland region, and the difference will be closer to 65 us$... thats a quite filling evening at taco bell for you and 2 friends.

i don't think that currency trading with limited buy or sell orders makes much sense for your average walking money of a few thousand L, but if you happen to buy BIG or cach out big it might be worth thinking about it.

I have wondered and even asked about it a time or two. For now, I just enjoy the buy rates over there.

Glad you got the order filled quickly.

Trying an experiment, since the L$275/$1 USD was filled so quickly, and floating a limit buy at L$280/$1 USD. We'll see what happens. Just curious to see if it will get filled at that rate at some point.

I use PayPal's "Mass Payment" feature. You'll need a business account with them to use this. Mass Pay was intended to let you make payments to a bunch of people all at once, but it works just fine for a single payment too...and the advantage is that the transfer fee is fixed, and very low. I transfer $100 US at a time, typically.

Here's a followup question: How much does it cost to deposit USD?

On the Xstreet Fees page (https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=4), it says "Incoming USD payments and disbursements can incur fees and limits depending on method of payment" but provides no other details.

Hmm, I don't think I've ever been charged a fee for depositing $US.