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# Market Orders

#### Core Concept of Market Orders

A **market order** means:

* You want to **buy or sell immediately**
* You are **willing to accept the best available limit order price.** 
* You do **not specify a price**, just the amount

This is ideal for traders who value **speed over precision**.

***

**Matching Logic**

* We fetch and sort limit orders by **price priority** and **timestamp** (FIFO).
* Matching is based on the side:
  * **BUY YES** → Matches with lowest-price **SELL YES**
  * **BUY NO** → Matches with lowest-price **SELL NO**
  * **SELL YES** → Matches with highest-price **BUY YES**
  * **SELL NO** → Matches with highest-price **BUY NO**
* **Partial Fills & Fallbacks**
  * If your market order **cannot be fully matched**:
    * The matched portion is settled on-chain.
    * The unmatched portion is **NOT stored** — market orders are either **fully matched or partially filled and discarded**.

#### Maker-Taker Priority

Mettle Market uses **maker-taker price priority** for all matches — including standard and cross-side matches:

* The **maker** is the trader whose order was already resting in the order book.
* The **taker** is the trader who submits a new order that triggers the match.
* The **trade executes at the maker’s price**, not the taker’s.

This ensures:

* Makers receive their requested price
* Takers never pay more (or receive less) than they agreed to
* Price-time fairness across all trades

Even in [**cross-side matching**](/mettle-market-docs/cross-side-matching.md) (e.g. BUY YES vs. BUY NO), the first order is treated as the maker, and the match executes at **that price** for both parties.


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