vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Even though it's preprocessed, your favorite website has to unpack the data, store it in some sort of database, and push it onto their website at time T4. A sophisticated website might then force a refresh of your browser at time T4 to show you the new information. But this forced refresh involves yet another slow crawl across the internet from where your website is based to your home computer, competing with your neighbor's 24/7 Netflix stream, etc. Then your browser (with its 83 plugins and banner ads everywhere) has to refresh, and you finally see the update at T5. So, a thousand factors come into play, but even assuming that Google is doing the most expensive and labor-intensive thing it can and that all the networks between you and Google and the exchange are as short as they can be, you're not going to hear about a trade -- even a massive, market-moving trade -- for anywhere from 500 milliseconds to 5 seconds after T0. And in a more realistic world that time will be 10-30 seconds. This is what Google calls ""Realtime"" on that disclaimer page, because they feel they're getting that info to you as fast as they possibly can (for free). Meanwhile, the computers that actually subscribe to an exchange heard about the trade way back at time T1 and acted on that information in a few microseconds. That's almost certainly before T2 and definitely way way before T3. The market for a particular instrument could change direction 5 times before Google even shows the first trade. So if you want true realtime access, you must subscribe to the exchange feed or, as keshlam suggests, sign up with a broker that provides its own optimized market feeds to you. (Note: This is not an endorsement of trading through brokers.)"
Suppose the price didn't drop on the ex-dividend date. Then people wanting to make a quick return on their money would buy shares the day before, collect the dividend, and then sell them on the ex-dividend date. But all those people trying to buy on the day before would push the price up, and they would push the price down trying to sell on the date.
Buying stocks is like an auction. Put in the price you want to pay and see if someone is willing to sell at that price.  Thing to remember about after hours trading; There is a lot less supply so there's always a larger bid/ask price spread. That's the price brokers charge to handle the stocks they broker over and above the fee.  That means you will always pay more after the market closes. Unless it is bad news, but I don't think you want to buy when that happens. I think a lot of the after market trading is to manipulate the market. Traders drive up the price overnight with small purchases then sell their large holdings when the market opens.
"In short, yes. By ""forward selling"", you enter into a futures contract by which you agree to trade Euros for dollars (US or Singapore) at a set rate agreed to by both parties, at some future time. You are basically making a bet; you think that the dollar will gain on the Euro and thus you'd pay a higher rate on the spot than you've locked in with the future. The other party to the contract is betting against you; he thinks the dollar will weaken, and so the dollars he'll sell you will be worth less than the Euros he gets for them at the agreed rate. Now, in a traditional futures contract, you are obligated to execute it, whether it ends up good or bad for you. You can, to avoid this, buy an ""option"". By buying the option, you pay the other party to the deal for the right to say ""no, thanks"". That way, if the dollar weakens and you'd rather pay spot price at time of delivery, you simply let the contract expire un-executed. The tradeoff is that options cost money up-front which is now sunk; whether you exercise the option or not, the other party gets the option price. That basically creates a ""point spread""; you ""win"" if the dollar appreciates against the Euro enough that you still save money even after buying the option, or if the dollar depreciates against the Euro enough that again you still save money after subtracting the option price, while you ""lose"" if the exchange rates are close enough to what was agreed on that it cost you more to buy the option than you gained by being able to choose to use it."
Yes, you can do this buy placing a conditional order to buy at market if the price moves to 106 or above. Once the price hits 106 your market order will hit the market and you will purchase the stock at 106 or above. You can also place a tack profit order at 107 linked to your initial conditional buy order, so that once you buy order is executed and you buy at 106, a take profit order will be executed only if the price reaches 107 or above.  If the price never reaches 106, neither your market buy order or take profit order will hit the market and you won't buy or sell anything.
Also, scale this up to the scale of the US' multiple stock exchanges, and there are lots of opportunities to make $5 every second. Computers are (of course) faster than people To tie it in completely with your question about 'picking off trades', HFT rigs can be set up and programmed to go faster than an average retail investor's order. Let's say you execute the trade to buy 100 shares @ $15.85 as a retail investor. The HFT rigs see your order starting to make the rounds of the different exchanges that your brokerage works through, and go out in front in a matter of milliseconds, finding the orders that are less than $15.85 and less than or equal to 100 shares. They execute a transaction, buy them up, sell to you, and pocket the difference. You have been ""picked off"". It's admittedly not the only way to use HFT equipment to make money, but it's definitely one way to do it."
"I probably don't understand something. I think you are correct about that. :) The main way money enters the stock market is through investors investing and taking money out. Money doesn't exactly ""enter"" the stock market. Shares of stock are bought and sold by investors to investors. The market is just a mechanism for a buyer and seller to find each other. For the purposes of this question, we will only consider non-dividend stocks. Okay. When you buy stock, it is claimed that you own a small portion of the company. This statement has no backing, as you cannot exchange your stock for the company's assets. For example, if I bought $10 of Apple Stock early on, but it later went up to $399, I can't go to Apple and say ""I own $399 of you, here you go it back, give me an iPhone."" The only way to redeem this is to sell the stock to another investor (like a Ponzi Scheme.) It is true that when you own stock, you own a small portion of the company. No, you can't just destroy your portion of the company; that wouldn't be fair to the other investors. But you can very easily sell your portion to another investor. The stock market facilitates that sale, making it very easy to either sell your shares or buy more shares. It's not a Ponzi scheme. The only reason your hypothetical share is said to be ""worth"" $399 is that there is a buyer that wants to buy it at $399. But there is a real company behind the stock, and it is making real money. There are several existing questions that discuss what gives a stock value besides a dividend: The stock market goes up only when more people invest in it. Although the stock market keeps tabs on Businesses, the profits of Businesses do not actually flow into the Stock Market. In particular, if no one puts money in the stock market, it doesn't matter how good the businesses do. The value of a stock is simply what a buyer is willing to pay for it.
"For every buyer there is a seller. That rule refers to actual (historical) trades. It doesn't apply to ""wannabees."" Suppose there are buyers for 2,000 shares and sellers for only 1,000 at a given price, P. Some of those buyers will raise their ""bid"" (the indication of the price they are willing to pay) above P so that the sellers of the 1000 shares will fill their orders first  (""sold to the highest bidder""). The ones that don't do this will (probably) not get their orders filled. Suppose there are more sellers than buyers. Then some sellers will lower their ""offer"" price to attract buyers (and some sellers probably won't). At a low enough price, there will likely be a ""match"" between the total number of shares on sale, and shares on purchase orders."
"Note: the answer below is speculative and not based on any first-hand knowledge of pump-and-dump schemes. The explanation with spamming doesn't really makes sense for me. Often you see a stock jump 30% or more in a single day at a particular moment in time. Unlikely that random people read their emails at that time and decide to buy. What I think happens is the pumper does a somewhat risky thing: starts buying a lot of shares of a stock that has declined a lot and had low volumes during the previous days. As the price starts to increase other people start to notice the jump and join the buying spree (also don't forget that some probably use buy-stop orders which are triggered when the price reaches a particular level). Also there should be some automatic trading involved (maybe HFT firms do pump-and-dumps) as you have to trade a big volume in a relatively short time span. I think it is unlikely to be done by human operators. Another explanation would be that there is a group of pumpers (to spread the risk so to speak). Update: As I think more of it, it is not necessary to buy ""a lot of shares"". You could buy some shares, sell them to another pumper and buy from them again at a higher price in several iterations. I think this could also work if you do it fast enough. These scheme makes sense only you previously bought many shares at the low price, possibly during several weeks. Once the price is pumped high enough you can start selling the shares you previously bought (in the days preceding the pump)."
So within 1 second you can have a trade be $50 or $50.04. However it will only go to $50.04 when the lower ask prices have been exhausted. - Does an order driven market have market makers? By definition, no. - What are some examples of quote driven and order driven financial markets, in which investors are commonly trading stocks and derivatives, especially in U.S.? Quote driven market: Bond market, Forex. Order driven market: NYSE comes from an order driven market but now would be better classified as a ""hybird market"" Conclusion: If you are asking in order to better understand today's stock markets then these old definitions of Quote market or Order market may not work. The big markets in the real world are neither. (IE: Nasdaq, NYSE...) The NYSE and Nasdaq are better classified as a ""hybird market"" as they use more then a single tactic from both market types to insure market liquidity, and transparency. Markets these days are strongly electronic, fast, and fairly liquid in most cases. Here are some resources to better understand these markets: An Introduction To Securities Markets The NYSE And Nasdaq: How They Work Understanding Order Execution"
A stock's price does not move in a completely continuous fashion.  It moves in discrete steps depending on who is buying/selling at given prices. I'm guessing that by opening bell the price for buying/selling a particular stock has changed based on information obtained overnight. A company's stock closes at $40.  Overnight, news breaks that the company's top selling product has a massive defect.  The next morning the market opens.  Are there any buyers of the stock at $40?  Probably not.  The first trade of the stock takes place at $30 and is thus, not the same as the previous day's close.
There isn't a formula like that, there is only the greed of other market participants, and you can try to predict how greedy those participants will be. If someone decided to place a sell order of 100,000 shares at $5, then you can buy an additional 100,000 shares at $5. In reality, people can infer that they might be the only ones trying to sell 100,000 shares right then, and raise the price so that they make more money. They will raise their sell order to $5.01, $5.02 or as high as they want, until people stop trying to buy their shares. It is just a non-stop auction, just like on ebay.
"If I really understood it, you bet that a quote/currency/stock market/anything will rise or fall within a period of time.    So, what is the relationship with trading ? I see no trading at all since I don't buy or sell quotes. You are not betting as in ""betting on the outcome of an horse race"" where the money of the participants is redistributed to the winners of the bet. You are betting on the price movement of a security. To do that you have to buy/sell the option that will give you the profit or the loss. In your case, you would be buying or selling an option, which is a financial contract. That's trading. Then, since anyone should have the same technic (call when a currency rises and put when it falls)[...] How can you know what will be the future rate of exchange of currencies? It's not because the price went up for the last minutes/hours/days/months/years that it will continue like that. Because of that everyone won't have the same strategy. Also, not everyone is using currencies to speculate, there are firms with real needs that affect the market too, like importers and exporters, they will use financial products to protect themselves from Forex rates, not to make profits from them. [...] how the brokers (websites) can make money ? The broker (or bank) will either: I'm really afraid to bet because I think that they can bankrupt at any time! Are my fears correct ? There is always a probability that a company can go bankrupt. But that's can be very low probability. Brokers are usually not taking risks and are just being intermediaries in financial transactions (but sometime their computer systems have troubles.....), thanks to that, they are not likely to go bankrupt you after you buy your option. Also, they are regulated to insure that they are solid. Last thing, if you fear losing money, don't trade. If you do trade, only play with money you can afford to lose as you are likely to lose some (maybe all) money in the process."
In general stock markets are very similar to that, however, you can also put in limit orders to say that you will only buy or sell at a given price. These sit in the market for a specified length of time and will be executed when an order arrives that matches the price (or better). Traders who set limit orders are called liquidity (or price) makers as they provide liquidity (i.e. volume to be traded) to be filled later. If there is no counterparty (i.e. buyer to your seller) in the market, a market maker; a large bank or brokerage who is licensed and regulated to do so, will fill your order at some price. That price is based on how much volume (i.e. trading) there is in that stock on average. This is called average daily volume (ADV) and is calculated over varying periods of time; we use ADV30 which is the 30 day average. You can always sell stocks for whatever price you like privately but a market order does not allow you to set your price (you are a price taker) therefore that kind of order will always fill at a market price. As mentioned above limit orders will not fill until the price is hit but will stay on book as long as they aren't filled, expired or cancelled.
In general, how does a large open market stock sale affect prices? A very general answer, all other things being equal, the price will move down. However there is nothing general. It depends on total number of shares in market and total turn over for that specific shares. The order book for the day etc. What is the maximum percentage of a company you could sell per day before the trading freezes, and what factors matter? Every stock exchange has rules that would determine when a particular stock would be suspended from trading, generally a 10-20% swing [either ways]. Generally highly liquid stock or stock during initial listing are exempt from such limits as they are left to arrive the market price ...  A large sell order may or may not swing the price for it to get suspended. At times even a small order may do ... again it is specific to a particular stock.
The reality that the share price did not move shows that there is nothing nefarious going on.  It is most likely some mutual fund offloading their position to another fund.   You can commonly see the play out at market openings if you have access to level II data.  You will see a big block sitting on both sides of the same bid/ask.  If you put in a higher bid (or vice versa) the two positions will move to match yours.  And when the market opens their trade will be transacted BEFORE yours, even though you are thinking ... 'well I put in my bid first'.  Obviously they have agreed to swap and agreed to use whatever value the market decides.
"When there is a trade the shares were both bought and sold. In any trade on the secondary market there has to be both a buyer and a seller for the trade to take place. So in ""lasttradesize"" a buyer has bought the shares from a seller."
"Firstly, if a stock costs $50 this second, the bid/ask would have to be 49/50.  If the bid/ask were 49/51, the stock would cost $51 this second.  What you're likely referring to is the last trade, not the cost.  The last trading price is history and doesn't apply to future transactions. To make it simple, let's define a simple order book.  Say there is a bid to buy 100 at $49, 200 at $48, 500 at $47.  If you place a market order to sell 100 shares, it should all get filled at $49.  If you had placed a market order to sell 200 shares instead, half should get filled at $49 and half at $48.  This is, of course, assuming no one else places an order before you get yours submitted.  If someone beats you to the 100 share lot, then your order could get filled at lower than what you thought you'd get.  If your internet connection is slow or there is a lot of latency in the data from the exchange, then things like this could happen.  Also, there are many ECNs in addition to the exchanges which may have different order books.  There are also trades which, for some reason, get delayed and show up later in the ""time and sales"" window. But to answer the question of why someone would want to sell low... the only reason I could think is they desire to drive the price down."
"As previously answered, the solution is margin. It works like this: You deposit e.g. 1'000 USD at your trading company. They give you a margin of e.g. 1:100, so you are allowed to trade with 100'000 USD.  Let's say you buy 5'000 pieces of a stock at $20 USD (fully using your 100'000 limit), and the price changes to $20.50 . Your profit is 5000* $0.50 = $2'500. Fast money? If you are lucky. Let's say before the price went up to 20.50, it had a slight dip down to $19.80. Your loss was 5000* $0.2 = 1'000$. Wait! You had just 1000 to begin with: You'll find an email saying ""margin call"" or ""termination notice"": Your shares have been sold at $19.80 and you are out of business. The broker willingly gives you this credit, since he can be sure he won't loose a cent. Of course you pay interest for the money you are trading with, but it's only for minutes. So to answer your question: You don't care when you have ""your money"" back, the trading company will always be there to give you more as long as you have deposit left. (I thought no one should get margin explained without the warning why it is a horrible idea to full use the ridiculous high margins some broker offer. 1:10 might or might not be fine, but 1:100 is harakiri.)"
"Trading at the start of a session is by far higher than at any other time of the day. This is mostly due to markets incorporating news into the prices of stocks. In other words, there are a lot of factors that can affect a stock, 24 hours a day, but the market trades for only 6.5 hours a day. So, a lot of news accumulates during the time when people cannot trade on that news. Then when markets finally open, people are able to finally trade on that news, and there is a lot of ""price discovery"" going on between market participants. In the last minutes of trading, volumes increase as well. This can often be attributed to certain kinds of traders closing out their position before the end of the day. For example, if you don't want to take the risk a large price movement at the start of the next day affecting you, you would need to completely close your position."
The role of the market maker is to make sure there is a bid and ask on a particular stock.  That's it.  The market maker ensures that there is a price at which you can buy and a price at which you can sell immediately, but these are not necessarily the best prices.  The majority of trades do not involve market makers and occur between two third parties. Whoever said a market order trades with the market maker is thinking of the way stock markets were years ago, not the way they are now. Market orders are supposed to execute immediately and at one time trading with the market makers was the method for executing immediately. If you issue a market order today, it executes with the best available limit order(s) on the other wide of the trade.  This may or may not involve a party that identifies as a market maker.
"That's the way the markets work in THEORY. In actual fact, markets are subject to ""real world"" pressures. That is, there are so many things going on in the market that the end of the ""Lined In"" lock up is just one of many. To produce the result you describe, traders would have to hold cash in reserve for this so-called ""contingency"" to buy at the end of the lock-up. In most cases, they wouldn't want to because of everything else that is going on.  To use a real world analogy, would you want to wait until the last possible moment before going to the bathroom? Or would you go now while you had the chance? That's what the decision about ""holding cash in reserve for a contingency"" is like."
I understand the question, I think. The tough thing is that trades over the next brief time are random, or appear so. So, just as when a stock is $10.00 bid / $10.05 ask, if you place an order below the ask, a tick down in price may get you a fill, or if the next trades are flat to higher, you might see the close at $10.50, and no fill as it never went down to your limit.  This process is no different for options than for stocks.  When I want to trade options, I make sure the strike has decent volume, and enter a market order. Edit - I reworded a bit to clarify. The Black–Scholes is a model, not a rigid equation. Say I discover an option that's underpriced, but it trades under right until it expires. It's not like there's a reversion to the mean that will occur. There are some very sophisticated traders who use these tools to trade in some very high volumes, for them, it may produce results. For the small trader you need to know why you want to buy a stock or its option and not worry about the last $0.25 of its price.