The Trading Day

Key term: closing price

A stock market doesn't trade around the clock. It opens at a set time, trades continuously through the session, and then closes at a set time — and only during that main session does the deepest, widest pool of buyers and sellers participate. Some trading does happen before the open and after the close, but far fewer people take part, so prices there can swing on thin activity that doesn't always hold up once the main session resumes.

The price a stock settles at when the main session ends each day is its closing price. It's the last agreed-upon trade of the regular session — the number that appears in every table, every headline, and every scoreboard for that day.

That's why the close matters so much more than any single moment during the day. A stock can spike or dip an hour into trading and fully reverse by the end of the session. The close is the day's settled verdict — it's what's left standing after every buyer and seller who wanted a say has had one.

It's also exactly what Munymo scores. The game compares each company's price at the start of the session to its closing price, because that comparison reflects the full day's worth of information and trading, not a random snapshot from the middle of the afternoon. When you're picking a winner, you're picking whichever company's closing price ends up further ahead.

In the daily game

The performance numbers shown after a matchup ends are always close-to-close — the same settled verdict this lesson describes.