Price discovery
Definition · Level 0 · Market basics
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How buyers and sellers, by competing, find what an asset is worth right now: every order and every trade adds information.
Example
Good news arrives, buyers raise their bids and the price moves up within seconds.
Where Tradecraft teaches it
Level 0 · Market basics, in the lesson “What markets do”: Why markets exist, and how a new share reaches its first buyers.
Related terms
- IPOInitial public offering: a company’s first sale of shares to the public, underwritten by banks that set the price with the company and allocate…
- Primary marketWhere issuers sell newly created securities (IPOs, new bond issues) to investors and receive the cash themselves.
- Secondary marketWhere investors trade already-issued securities with each other, on exchanges or over the counter.
- SecurityA tradable financial asset: a share, a bond or a similar contract that can be bought and sold in a market.
- TickerThe short letter code that identifies a listed security on quotes, charts and orders; also called the symbol.
- 52-week high / all-time highThe highest price over the past year of trading / the highest price ever recorded (split-adjusted).