My sql query gives the columns: product_id (which is an integer) pnl (which is float - can be negative) I get more than 100 rows. I want to filter out the top 40 rows based on abs(pnl). But the results should be ordered by pnl column only and not by abs(pnl). I want to do this for MSSQL 2005. Is there a way to do this?