If you want to buy an apple stock now at say 185$ (at time of writing). What gives you the confidence that you can buy it at this price? 1. You could put a lim

If you want to buy an apple stock now at say 185$ (at time of writing). What gives you the confidence that you can buy it at this price? 1. You could put a limit order at 185$ or lower. But maybe no one is putting a sell order at this price? So you are stuck waiting for some time, maybe never if the price keeps going up? 2. You could put it at 190$ to trigger a trade but you risk buying 5$ more than what you originally wanted if people already cleaned up the book from 185$ to 190$. The only reason you can definitively say that an apple stock is worth exactly 185$ right now is liquidity/depth of the market. Because there are enough players in the game that is willing to make miniscule amount of profit in very short amount of time.