Is Selling Guaranteed?

LiquidCrystal said: "Hello, Something confuses me about stock trading. Is it sure that you can sell? Let me explain this, you may pick and buy a good stock and if your choice is good, the price will go high, so far so good. Now you want to sell what you bought to make a profit when the price is good. The question is, is it sure that when you want to sell, you will reall be able to? Isn't it possible that you issue a sell order but your offered stocks remain offered for selling for a long time without being bought by a buyer and things stays so for days until the prices goes down? Even the worth, could it be bought at that down time for a price lower than your buy price and the result that your profit-hoped sell order turns into a loss one? I read about stock market "specialists" that can fix this situation but not sure if it's that where they interfer. Can anyone please explain? Thanx, LC"

HappyHarry said: "Hi LC, It's not guaranteed, but its close enough. You need to be concerned with liquidity. The only time you might have a problem with liquidity is on a very thinly traded stock. Always check the average daily trading volume to see if enough people are trading. If the stock has a volume of 100,000 or more shares daily, you're alright."

LiquidCrystal said: "Thank you HH, that was useful. Could you please explain what you meant by "liquidity" here? Is it the total amount of money the whole shares are traded for daily?"

HappyHarry said: "[QUOTE=LiquidCrystal]Thank you HH, that was useful. Could you please explain what you meant by "liquidity" here? Is it the total amount of money the whole shares are traded for daily?[/QUOTE] Basically liquidity is a relative term. The more the shares trade hands, the higher the liquidity. If you have your investment in something like SUNW which trades millions of shares daily, your investments is very liquid. If you invest in Persian rugs made in 200BC, you will have very few other traders in the market with you, and that investment would be considered very illiquid."

LiquidCrystal said: "Thank you guys, that was really helpful. [QUOTE=LanceJ] Microsoft Liquidity Ratio: $1,858,965,904.50 HURRAY! HOLDING CO. Liquidity Ratio: $264,443.12 [/QUOTE] LanceJ, this is a very good indication, but ratios generally are unitless, are you sure the number is represented with the "$" ahead or does it have another name other than ratio?"

LiquidCrystal said: "I'll check it LanceJ and after all the most important thing is that it gives an indication, thanx again :)"