Intra-day Trading

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Question was asked at work:

Intra-day Trading for stocks/shares/currency. Why do we have/need it?

Would having a day as the minimum time unit work?

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s1962a said:

At what point of the day would you 'execute' the trade, and when would the price be set?

(I should point out this was not my idea, but a colleagues)

not too sure; execute at any point of the day and price set at end. basically so you could trade at any point through out the day, but the price is only updated at one point in the day

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Hoofy said:

What is the purpose? To stop "gambling"? To stop wild market fluctuations? To allow traders to get up at 3pm for 5 minutes' work and still earn the same amount of money/bonus?

to stop the first two.
afaik a lot of the trading is done by computer algorythms, setting limits at which to buy/sell.
If once a day trading rather than intra-day wouldn't stop wild fluctionations, gambling, shortselling etc then it would have no point.

My question of it is that would it just create selling between companies rather through the exchange.

Bing o said:

I for one appreciate the work you do in the infant schools.

You would hate to know where I work!

The reason I have posted this is becuase I wasn't able to give a quick answer as to why this wouldn't help, However I am also not close to any of this trading in my daily life.

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R11ysf said:

Simple example. You have shares in Northern Rock and you think things are going down the pan. You want to sell you shares at 9am. At 12am there a queues outside every branch. At 2pm I decide to sell all my shares. What price do you get? What price do I get?

Markets are fluid things with constantly changing prices which react to real time information. Think of it like live sports betting. You can bet on a football match before or during the game. 4-0 down at half time the odds of winning are really low but there are still odds.

good answer. but then shouldn't trading be 24/7?

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ok so generally you would prefer 24/7 trading.

would this create more or less stability, or not change it at all?