Pending orders in Meta Trader are a convenient way to automate trade entries at specific price levels. However, sometimes traders notice that their pending orders disappear or fail to open. This can be frustrating, but there are clear reasons why this happens.
Pending orders (Buy Limit, Sell Limit, Buy Stop, and Sell Stop etc.) are only triggered when the market price reaches the specified level.
If the price never touched your order level, the order remains pending until it expires or is manually canceled.
So why you might find yourself in a situation, when pending order is no longer in pending, but also you do not have open orders:
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Expiration Time
If you set an expiration time when creating the pending order, it will automatically be removed once that time passes, even if the price hasn’t reached the level. -
No Money
When the price reaches your pending order level, you must have enough free margin to open the trade.
If your account balance or margin is insufficient, the order will not execute and will be removed. -
Cancelled
Check if you manually canceled the order or if an Expert Advisor (EA) or script running on your account removed it.
How to Check the Reason
Navigate to the Journal or History tab in the Terminal. In the “Comment” field, you’ll find the reason why the pending order was closed. If the “Comment” column isn’t visible, right-click anywhere in the table and select “Comment” from the drop-down menu. This will display whether the order expired, was canceled, or rejected due to margin or stop-level restrictions.