how do stock traders know someone will buy their stock/sell stock at a price they want?

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Like if I try to sell an old couch on marketplace, there’s no guarantee someone will buy it. This is the first part of my question, what if no one wants the stock they’re selling? Can they just sell it to the ‘stockmarket’ or do they actually have to find a buyer like a specific bank or person that will buy it?

Then when I sell a couch, I can pick the price I want to sell it for, and maybe go back and forth with the buyer. As I understand though stocks have a specific price every moment, and you sell it for whatever the current price is. What if it’s an in demand stock though? Couldn’t you sell it for above whatever the current market price is?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

A sell order isn’t fulfilled automatically – it is instead fulfilled by a buy order offering to buy for the same price. The “stock-market” is a market of traders, and so connects traders together – just like an actual stall market.

>As I understand though stocks have a specific price every moment, and you sell it for whatever the current price is.

Not really. In stock-trading apps, you can either “one-click” sell, which places a sell order at the market price – or you can place a sell order at an alternative price. You can either select the price as advertised, or put in an alternative buy order or sell

>What if it’s an in demand stock though? Couldn’t you sell it for above whatever the current market price is?

Market price of stocks attempt to balance out the expected *future* value of the company – whereby buyers take it in the hope it will rise in the future. Any high demand for a stock is already “built-in” to the current market price.

Selling a stock for above the average market price just makes your selling price less competitive. By definitions there’s already cheaper prices out there whereby the buyer would make a larger profit.

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