Liquidity
السيولة
Liquidity is the ease with which an asset can be bought or sold quickly without materially moving its price. A liquid stock has many active buyers and sellers, narrow bid-ask spreads, and high trading volumes. Liquidity is a key criterion for selecting the constituents of the EGX 30 index.
Example
A share trading tens of thousands of times a day can be sold in size without moving the price much. One trading a few times a week may have no buyer near the last quoted price when you want out.
Why it matters
Liquidity determines whether the price you see is a price you can actually get. It matters most at exactly the moment you least want it to — when many holders want to sell at once.
A common mistake
Reading a last traded price on an illiquid share as a valuation. If the last trade was small and days old, it tells you what one buyer paid, not what your holding is worth.
Live example from the Egyptian market
The most actively traded EGX stock today is Lotus For Agricultural Investments And Development (LUTS), 360,020,900 shares and +8.60%. Details →
Data as of ; refreshes with every session or disclosure.
See it in action