What a market, an exchange and a price are
Short version for experts: tables, lists and screenshots only.
Words in this lesson (3)
Let's start with the basics
A market is a place where some people want to buy something and others want to sell it. A farmers' market, the housing market, the stock market — they all work the same way.
An exchange is an organized market on the internet. It brings buyers and sellers together and makes sure every trade happens fairly.
What is traded there
| What | In plain words | Where in MAMAY |
|---|---|---|
| Stock | a small piece of a company. Buy a share — you own a tiny part of the business | the "US stocks" and "Russian stocks" blocks |
| Cryptocurrency (coin) | a digital asset like bitcoin | the "Trading" and "Cryptocurrency" blocks |
Where the price comes from
Nobody sets the price. It appears by itself — at the moment a buyer and a seller agree.
Picture a queue:
- sellers say: "I'll sell at 101", "I'll sell at 102", "I'll sell at 103";
- buyers say: "I'll buy at 100", "I'll buy at 99", "I'll buy at 98".
Until the most generous buyer (100) and the most flexible seller (101) agree, there is no trade. Someone has to give in. The buyer gave in and bought at 101 — the price is now 101.
This list of orders is called the order book. In MAMAY you can see it on the "Terminal" tab, to the right of the chart.
Why the price goes up and down
- More buyers, and they're in a hurry — they buy up the cheap offers, and the price goes up.
- More sellers, and they're in a hurry — they sell to whoever pays less, and the price goes down.
That's it. News, earnings reports, rumors — these are just reasons why people start hurrying one way or the other.
How people make money here
Bought at 100, sold at 110 — made 10. Bought at 100, sold at 90 — lost 10. On top of that, the exchange charges a small fee for every trade — the fee.
Sounds simple. The hard part is that nobody knows for sure where the price will go. So a trader's whole job is not to guess, but to act by rules that end up in profit over a large number of trades. That's what MAMAY teaches.