When you sell stock who is buying it

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Related Articles. Career Advice Nasdaq Market Maker vs. Investing Getting to Know the Stock Exchanges. Partner Links. Related Terms The Role of Market Makers Market makers compete for customer order flow by displaying buy and sell quotations for a guaranteed number of shares.

What Is Last-Sale Reporting? Last-sale reporting is the submission of details about the quantity and price of a stock trade to Nasdaq within 90 seconds of the trade's close. Specialist Firm A specialist firm formerly employed specialists to represent specific stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. Specialists are now Designated Market Makers. Specialist Unit A specialist unit was a group of people or firms that served as market makers for specific stocks in the period before electronic exchanges.

Specialist A specialist was a term formerly used to describe a member of an exchange who acted as the market maker to facilitate the trading of a given stock.

Equity Market An equity market is a market in which shares are issued and traded, either through exchanges or over-the-counter markets. Investopedia is part of the Dotdash publishing family. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for Investopedia. Since there are a large number of participants in the stock market, the flow of orders in most cases results in smooth changes in stock prices to match buying and selling pressure. A special case occurs when a company wants to sell shares into to the market for the first time -- an initial public offering.

Since there is no price history for a new company in the market, the underwriters of an IPO go out to large financial companies to get firm orders to buy shares at a pre-set stock price. The initial IPO price is set by analysis and some guesswork as to where the shares will trade when they first hit the market.

The initial institutional buyers of IPO shares then start to sell those shares on the exchanges, where regular investors can get a chance to invest in the new, publicly traded company. Tim Plaehn has been writing financial, investment and trading articles and blogs since His work has appeared online at Seeking Alpha, Marketwatch. Plaehn has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the U. Air Force Academy. At the center of everything we do is a strong commitment to independent research and sharing its profitable discoveries with investors.

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