OrderQty (FIX tag 38)

QtyFIX 4.4FIX 4.2

OrderQty (tag 38) is a Qty field defined in FIX 4.4 and FIX 4.2. It appears in 22 message types, always optionally.

At a glance

Tag: 38
Name: OrderQty
Datatype: Qty (float)
Dialects: FIX 4.4 and FIX 4.2
Messages: 22

What the specification says

FIX 4.4

Quantity ordered. This represents the number of shares for equities or par, face or nominal value for FI instruments. (Prior to FIX 4.2 this field was of type int)

FIX 4.2

Number of shares ordered. This represents the number of shares for equities or based on normal convention the number of contracts for options, futures, convertible bonds, etc. (Prior to FIX 4.2 this field was of type int)

Descriptions are quoted from the FIX Orchestra sources under the Apache 2.0 licence.

A real message using tag 38

NewOrderSingle · FIX 4.4

Tag	Field	Wire value	Meaning
8	BeginString	FIX.4.4
9	BodyLength	122
35	MsgType	D	Order – Single
49	SenderCompID	BOARTEAM
56	TargetCompID	COUNTERPARTY
34	MsgSeqNum	2
52	SendingTime	20240101-12:00:00.000
11	ClOrdID	ORD-10042
54	Side	1	Buy
60	TransactTime	20240101-12:00:00.000
38	OrderQty	1000000
40	OrdType	1	Market
10	CheckSum	236

Edit and decode it yourself

Shown with | separators for readability. On the wire FIX uses SOH (0x01), an invisible control byte — and because BodyLength and CheckSum are computed over the actual bytes, the two forms have different checksums. Both are valid and both decode here.

Open in the full decoder →

Generated from the FIX 4.4 dictionary and verified at build time: it parses and validates with no issues. Open the decoder to try your own message.

Where tag 38 appears

Requiredness is a property of the message, not of the field: the same tag can be optional in one message and conditionally required in another.

Message	MsgType	FIX 4.4	FIX 4.2	Where in the message
AllocationInstruction	J	Optional	—	inside the OrdAllocGrp component
AllocationReport	AS	Optional	—	inside the OrdAllocGrp component
Confirmation	AK	Optional	—	inside the OrdAllocGrp component
ConfirmationRequest	BH	Optional	—	inside the OrdAllocGrp component
CrossOrderCancelReplaceRequest	t	Conditional	—	inside SideCrossOrdModGrp › OrderQtyData
CrossOrderCancelRequest	u	Conditional	—	inside SideCrossOrdCxlGrp › OrderQtyData
DontKnowTrade	Q	Conditional	Optional	inside the OrderQtyData component
ExecutionReport	8	Conditional	Optional	inside the OrderQtyData component
IOI	6	Conditional	—	inside the OrderQtyData component
MultilegOrderCancelReplace	AC	Conditional	—	inside the OrderQtyData component
NewOrderCross	s	Conditional	—	inside SideCrossOrdModGrp › OrderQtyData
NewOrderList	E	Conditional	Optional	inside ListOrdGrp › OrderQtyData
NewOrderMultileg	AB	Conditional	—	inside the OrderQtyData component
NewOrderSingle	D	Conditional	Optional	inside the OrderQtyData component
OrderCancelReplaceRequest	G	Conditional	Optional	inside the OrderQtyData component
OrderCancelRequest	F	Conditional	Optional	inside the OrderQtyData component
Quote	S	Conditional	—	inside the OrderQtyData component
QuoteRequest	R	Conditional	Optional	inside QuotReqGrp › OrderQtyData
QuoteRequestReject	AG	Conditional	—	inside QuotReqRjctGrp › OrderQtyData
QuoteResponse	AJ	Conditional	—	inside the OrderQtyData component
QuoteStatusReport	AI	Conditional	—	inside the OrderQtyData component
TradeCaptureReport	AE	Conditional	—	inside the OrderQtyData component

Wire format

A decimal quantity. Fractional quantities are legal, which is why this is a float family rather than an integer. @boarteam/fix parses the value as a number and reports parse/invalid-float when it does not lex as one; the raw string is kept so precision and trailing zeros are never lost.

Read tag 38 in TypeScript

decode.tsts

import { createFixEngine } from "@boarteam/fix";import { dictionary } from "@boarteam/fix-dict-fix44";const fix = createFixEngine(dictionary);const { message, issues } = fix.parse(raw);const field = message.fields[38];field?.name;   // "OrderQty"field?.raw;    // the verbatim wire stringfield?.value;  // coerced to a number

Decode this in your own code

The same engine that produced the decoded example above is an Apache-2.0 npm package with zero runtime dependencies. It runs in Node and in the browser, and parse() returns problems as data instead of throwing.

npm i @boarteam/fix @boarteam/fix-dict-fix44

Try the decoder Source on GitHub