Although Etrade has rules about how far a bid can be from the market, I'm sure I've placed at limit orders considerably greater than 10% from the last trade.
>10% from market at, say, $0.05 is only $0.056 - is that what you mean? So if buy side is 0.04 and sell side has dropped to 0.055 but the last trade was 0.056 then you couldn't even place a buy order at 0.045. Maybe I'm missing something important?
I have been denied orders that were too far from market - but it's been quite a bit more than 10%. (Others might be able to verify this - or it might be on the Etrade website somewhere.)
Only once or twice has an order of mine been checked by Etrade and each time it took less than 30 seconds - and was for a queued bid, not an at market bid. (That's not counting the fiasco a few months ago when the moved everything from Sydney to Melbourne.)
I don't trade through other brokers so cannot compare.
