What actually, directly causes the numerical change of a stock value?
I know why stock numbers go up and down, but I’m asking exactly HOW, the nitty gritty details, what engine actually changes the value of the stock from 695.56 to 695.89, is there some huge supercomputer that computes all this?
That was an excellent explanation, thank you.
By value I assume you mean the stock’s price. With price there is no computation to be made. The price reflects the last price paid for the most recent transaction. Buyers and sellers place their orders and those orders are matched up and executed. If you look at a stock quote, you will see an ASK and a BID price. The ASK price is the price at which someone is willing to sell their shares. The BID price is the price that someone is willing to buy shares. The actual movement in the stock price is due to the imbalance in buy and sell orders. If there are a lot of sellers and a few buyers, the stocks price will fall untill it finds a level at which the buyers are interested. The price will rise when the buyers out number the sellers and bid the price up in order to coax someone into selling their shares.