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Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Investor Alley => Topic started by: Samwise on January 30, 2019, 10:56:26 PM

Title: Vanguard VTSAX buy/sell speed?
Post by: Samwise on January 30, 2019, 10:56:26 PM
Hey all, I am somewhat new to using Vanguard.  How long does it take for a buy or sell order of VTSAX, for example, to execute?  Does it usually take 24 hours?  If I make the buy or sell order, can I feel confident it will happen fairly close to the trading price at the time I put in the order, or can the price change a lot before the order actually happens -- and if that's the case, is there any way to prevent this?  i.e. put in "buy, but only if it's at or below X price"?  Thanks in advance!
Title: Re: Vanguard VTSAX buy/sell speed?
Post by: secondcor521 on January 30, 2019, 11:03:57 PM
As a mutual fund, VTSAX is not traded throughout the day and is only priced once per day.

VTSAX buy and sell orders execute at the close, and receive the price that day.  You can place an order any time, and it will be executed at the next close.  So if you place an order any time between now and 3:59pm EST tomorrow, it would be executed at 4pm EST tomorrow.

You cannot put limit orders to buy or sell.  You can get an idea of what the closing price will be by watching VTI, which is an ETF and thus trades during the day.  VTI and VTSAX both follow the same index.
Title: Re: Vanguard VTSAX buy/sell speed?
Post by: MustacheAndaHalf on January 31, 2019, 07:02:45 AM
If you sell VTSAX before the market opens, then you just get whatever changes happen during market hours.  So you made your post at 11 pm - in that case, you'd wait for the next day, for the market to close.  I think it then takes one more day for the money from a sale to be available in your account.

ETFs sell immediately, but it takes 2 days to fully resolve the sale.  If you want to withdraw money, then you're still waiting 2 days.  But if you want to sell one ETF and buy another, you can do that instantly.  Vanguard credits your account for the sale, and you can immediately use that credit to buy something else.  You can easily do both in under 1 minute - at the current market prices, without waiting for the market to close.

I think some Vanguard funds restrict how often you can buy and sell?  They do that because the fund itself deals with your sale or purchase, and they prefer stability.  But ETFs trade on the open market, so there's no restriction on frequency.  There's huge institutional investors that wait for ETFs to be worth pennies more than the underlying assets, and when that happens they are authorized to create blocks of new ETF shares.


Title: Re: Vanguard VTSAX buy/sell speed?
Post by: secondcor521 on January 31, 2019, 10:37:55 AM
I think some Vanguard funds restrict how often you can buy and sell?  They do that because the fund itself deals with your sale or purchase, and they prefer stability.

Several Vanguard index funds restrict trading.  Basically if you want to switch from buying to selling or selling to buying, you have to wait 30 days.  If you want to sell some today and then sell some more tomorrow, you can do that.  If you want to buy some today and buy some more next week, you can do that.  But if you buy today, you have to wait 30 days to sell, or if you sell today, you have to wait 30 days to buy.

The reason that they restrict trading is that it drives up the mutual fund's costs, and they want to keep costs low for everyone.  If you want to trade, there are plenty of other places and methods to do that, and Vanguard index funds encourage traders to go elsewhere.
Title: Re: Vanguard VTSAX buy/sell speed?
Post by: walkwalkwalk on January 31, 2019, 10:55:59 AM
Came to this post thinking you were deciding whether to buy/sell VTSAX or buy/sell speed.