Liquidity
How much you can trade without moving the price — the property that makes everything else about trading work.
Placing TradesBeginner 4 min read· Lesson 4 of 11 in Stock Market Basics
What it looks like
Liquid: tight spreads, deep order books, millions of shares/day — you enter and exit at will. Illiquid: wide spreads, your own order moves the price, and exits in a panic happen at fire-sale levels. Liquidity evaporates exactly when everyone needs it.
Practical screen
Prefer names trading well over ~500k shares/day (dollar volume matters more: price × volume). On this platform every scan result shows volume; treat thin names' signals with suspicion — indicators on illiquid charts are mostly noise.