So, sorry for the possibly dumb question, but I still haven't found a satisfactory answer to this after reading up on it.
Say I'm buying stock X and it costs $20/share, as in whatever ticker I'm using says "X: $20" on it. I go into whatever application I use to trade and say "I want to buy 1 share". I understand that high-speed trading means some of that stock is purchased milliseconds before I put the trade in to bump up the price, so I'll always pay more than what's listed, but whatever.
So, by the time I hit 'buy' it's $21 a share and my app buys it anyways because I didn't put a limit on the order.
Now, my question is, why does the ticker still say "X: $20"? If I bought at $21, shouldn't the market price be $21 now?
And it's not just a delay; I've had this happen before where the price goes down (say, $19) meaning I paid a price higher than the market price ever was... how is that possible if "the market price" is "whatever people pay"?
Submitted April 11, 2018 at 01:05AM by IKeepForgetting https://ift.tt/2GRssyn
