They "work" as intended. If there is a sufficient volume of buyers to provide "takers" for your stock at your chosen price, then your sale should be executed at the price you specify.
If there's not any buyers at that price, or not enough to fill your order (as previously-placed orders get filled first), then you may not get the price you wanted and may instead get filled at a lower price.
I thought that a stop order could be "zoomed" through. And before it is executed the stock could drop far below the order.
Much lower? Not as likely with very liquid stocks, but that is indeed possible. And much more likely if you're selling stock which only trades a few thousand shares a day, for example.
Then it is executed anyway at a much lower threshold.
That is indeed possible.
Is this true? (question for anyone).
Yes.
That's a pretty timid answer, considering what happened to APPL. 268 to 199, back to 258. That's enough to trigger 20% stop points, much less a tight 10% stop. It zoomed down, folks were stopped out, and it zoomed back.
PG went to 0.01. How's that for zoom?
Thanks. Your answer is clear (unlike my broker agreement).