the stock market, who am I “selling” to?

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I understand but I don’t. When I “sell” stocks, who am I selling to exactly? The people who are buying in that exact moment? The exchange institution? Same when I’m “buying”.

In: Economics

13 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Stock market is basically a continuous auction. You have people saying they will sell for $1 or more, and then people saying they will buy for $0.98 or less. When a sell order and a buy order can agree on a figure, that stock trades hands.

For example, when buying, you can do a market buy: your broker will find the cheapest (ish) sell price currently, and buy them on your behalf.

Or you could put in a buy order at a certain cost per share, and that will get filled when sell orders at that price come in.

Vice versa for the selling side.

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