Order Filled: A Trading Desk Story

Graded on how you work, not what you make

Your supervisor doesn't care whether you made money today. Marsh cares whether you did the job you were given, and whether you kept the plan you made at the morning meeting. Promise "no order over 1,000 shares", then sell all 4,000 at once at a good price, and the Day Review still gives you a C.

A day on the desk

At the morning meeting you get your Tickets: a client who wants 2,000 shares bought under their limit, 4,000 shares the desk owns and wants sold by noon, an order to work against the day's average price without ever being more than a tenth of the market's volume. You say how you'll do it. Then the market opens and the clock runs. The client changes their mind, a headline moves the price, a colleague asks you something and doesn't wait long for the answer. At the close, the Day Review grades two things: how well you executed, and whether you kept your word.

A terminal that teaches its tools

The screen is a trading terminal: a chart you pan, zoom and draw on, the tape of every trade, your orders, the Ticket and how far along it is. Order types and panes start locked, each labelled with when it unlocks, and someone on the desk shows you each one before you use it. On your first day the job is one order. A line above the chart always says what to do next; turn it off when you don't need it.

The people on the desk

Marsh, the desk head, who asks what your plan is and holds you to it. Carla, the sales trader, who brings the clients' orders. Theo, the other junior, who would like you to take more risk. Ines, the risk manager, who will sell what's left herself if you hit your loss limit. They remember what you told them, and Friday's review brings it back.

No second tries

A day happens once: you can't reload the morning for a better price. Once a day is finished, you can replay it for practice, and nothing you do there changes your career.

Features

• A story on a US trading desk in 2010: morning meetings, questions asked while the market runs, and a Friday choice the desk remembers
  
• Tickets graded on execution and discipline, A to D, in a Day Review and a Week Review
  
• A trading terminal with market, limit and stop orders, orders you change in place, four chart types, seven drawing tools and three indicators
  
• Guidance for people who have never traded: a next-step line and a ring on the control to use, on by default
  
• Replay any finished day, with drills: each plan from that morning's meeting becomes a challenge
  
• Save a review card of your day: the grades, the supervisor's verdict and the chart, never the profit
  
• English and Simplified Chinese, with separate settings for the interface and the story
  
• Market colours: green up, red up or blue and orange; a dark and a light theme
  
• Interface size, story text size, text speed and reduced motion
  
• Music that follows the day, with separate volumes for music, effects, voices, spoken alerts and the trading floor
  
• Single-player, no account, no connection needed

Disclaimer

Order Filled is a game. Its companies, people and headlines are invented, and its prices are generated. It is not investment advice, it doesn't teach you how to make money, and it doesn't connect to any broker or real account.