Good for day

Every resting order carries a time in force instruction saying how long it stays live. Good for day, shown on most tickets as Day or Today, keeps the order working until the session ends and then cancels whatever has not been filled. It says nothing about price, size or direction: the only thing it sets is the order's lifespan.

The definition of the day is what catches people out. It is the venue's or the broker's trading day, not a calendar day and not local midnight. Foreign exchange contracts roll at the platform's server time, which can sit several hours from where the reader is, so an order entered late in the evening can expire far sooner than expected. An instrument that trades in exchange sessions expires at the close of that session, and one that trades in extended hours may or may not be included, which is a per instrument convention rather than a general rule.

Partial fills are handled the obvious way but are worth stating. Where part of the order fills before the cut off, that part is a completed trade and only the remainder is cancelled. A day order is not an all or nothing instruction; that is a different one, fill or kill, and the two are sometimes confused because both mention cancellation.