In the stock market,for someone to make money, does that mean someone has to lose money?

Question

When I am buy stock at a lower price point than it was trading a 1 day or week, month or year later, does it mean that somebody during that same time frame is losing the difference?

In: Economics

Answer 1

Not necessarily… they may have bought a long time ago. You buy stock at $200 that was trading at $220 a few weeks ago, but there were investors who bought at $10 or $20 or $100 or $150, etc. do even if their holdings of that stock were sold at less than its peak value, they still made money.