Is it legal to sell my stock at any specified price to a specified person in US Market?
So I want to sell my 100 shares of AAPL to him at a price of 10 or   even 1 US Dollar. Is that legal/allowed? Of course. It's your stocks - do with it what you want. if the two persons are not served by a same broker. You'll have to talk to your broker about the technicalities of the transaction. if the person who sell are US citizen and the person who buy are not, and and vice-versa Since you asked specifically about US citizenship, I'll assume you're in the US or the transaction is taking place in the US. Citizenship has nothing to do with it (except may be for economic sanctions against Russians or Iranians that may come into play). What is important is the tax residency status. Such a transfer is essentially a gift, and if you're a US tax resident (which doesn't correlate to your immigration status necessarily) - you'll have to deal with the gift tax consequences on the discount value. For example - you have 100 shares of AAPL which you sold to your friend for $1 each when the fair market value (FMV) was $501. So essentially, the friend got $50,100 value for $100. I.e.: $50K gift. Since this amount is above the annual $14K exemption - you'll have to deal with the gift tax and file gift tax return. There are also consequences for the capital gains tax for both you and your friend. I suggest you talk to a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State) about the specifics given your circumstances. If you (or the recipient) are also a foreign citizen/tax resident - then that country's laws also may affect your situation.
"Yes, you can do that, but you have to have the stocks issued in your name (stocks that you're holding through your broker are issued in ""street name"" to your broker). If you have a physical stock certificate issued in your name - you just endorse it like you would endorse a check and transfer the ownership. If the stocks don't physically exist - you let the stock registrar know that the ownership has been transferred to someone else. As to the price - the company doesn't care much about the price of private sales, but the taxing agency will. In the US, for example, you report such a transaction as either a gift (IRS form 709), if the transaction was at a price significantly lower than the FMV (or significantly higher, on the other end), or a sale (IRS form 1040, schedule D) if the transaction was at FMV." "This probably won't be a popular answer due to the many number of disadvantaged market participants out there but: Yes, it is possible to distort the markets for securities this way. But it is more useful to understand how this works for any market (since it is illegal in securities markets where company shares are involves).  Since you asked about the company Apple, you should be aware this is a form of market manipulation and is illegal... when dealing with securities. In any supply and demand market this is possible especially during periods when other market participants are not prevalent. Now the way to do this usually involves having multiple accounts you control, where you are acting as multiple market participants with different brokers etc. The most crafty ways to do with involve shell companies w/ brokerage accounts but this is usually to mask illegal behavior In the securities markets where there are consequences for manipulating the shares of securities. In other markets this is not necessary because there is no authority prohibiting this kind of trading behavior. Account B buys from Account A, account A buys from Account B, etc. The biggest issue is getting all of the accounts capitalized initially. The third issue is then actually being able to make a profit from doing this at all. Because eventually one of your accounts will have all of the shares or whatever, and there would still be no way to sell them because there are no other market participants to sell to, since you were the only one moving the price. Therefore this kind of market manipulation is coupled with ""promotions"" to attract liquidity to a financial product. (NOTE the mere fact of a promotion does not mean that illegal trading behavior is occurring, but it does usually mean that someone else is selling into the liquidity) Another way to make this kind of trading behavior profitable is via the derivatives market. Options contracts are priced solely by the trading price of the underlying asset, so even if your multiple account trading could only at best break even when you sell your final holdings (basically resetting the price to where it was because you started distorting it), this is fine because your real trade is in the options market. Lets say Apple was trading at $200 , the options contract at the $200 strike is a call trading at $1 with no intrinsic value. You can buy to open several thousand of the $200 strike without distorting the shares market at all,  then in the shares market you bid up Apple to $210, now your options contract is trading at $11 with $10 of intrinsic value, so you just made 1000% gain and are able to sell to close those call options. Then you unwind the rest of your trade and sell your $210 apple shares, probably for $200 or $198 or less (because there are few market participants that actually valued the shares for that high, the real bidders are at $200 and lower). This is hardly a discreet thing to do, so like I mentioned before, this is illegal in markets where actual company shares are involved and should not be attempted in stock markets but other markets won't have the same prohibitions, this is a general inefficiency in capital markets in general and certain derivatives pricing formulas. It is important to understand these things if you plan to participate in markets that claim to be fair. There is nothing novel about this sort of thing, and it is just a problem of allocating enough capital to do so." Despite the fact that I think there is a litany of inaccuracies and misunderstandings related to quoted price and transaction price and the way prices move and assets transact; if you were able to, under these extremely narrow and very unlikely conditions, affect the prices of these assets that would be market manipulation in the eyes of the SEC. Link to the SEC page about market manipulation. "Most of the time* you're selling to other investors, not back to the company. The stock market is a collection of bid (buy offers) and asks (sell offers). When you sell your stock as a retail investor at the ""market"" price you're essentially just meeting whatever standing bid offers are on the market.  For very liquid stocks (e.g. Apple), you can pretty much always get the displayed price because so many stocks are being traded. However during periods of very high volatility or for low-volume stocks, the quoted price may not be indicative of what you actually pay.  As an example, let's say you have 5 stocks you're trying to sell and the bid-side order book is 2 stocks for $105, 2 for $100, and 5 for $95. In this scenario the quoted price will be $105 (the best bid price), but if you accept market price you'll settle 2 for 105, 2 for 100, and 1 for 95. After your sell order goes through, the new quoted price will be $95. For high volume stocks, there will usually be so many orders near the midpoint price ($105, in this case) that you won't see any price slippage for small orders.  You can also post limit orders, which are essentially open orders waiting to be filled like in the above example. They ensure you get the price you want, but you have no way to guarantee they'll be filled or not.  Edit: as a cool example, check out the bitcoin GDAX on coinbase for a live example of what the order book looks like for stocks. You'll see that the price of bitcoin will drift towards whichever direction has the less dense order book (e.g. price drifts upwards when there are far more bids than asks.)" You can*, if the market is open, in a normal trading phase (no auction phase), works, and there is an existing bid or offer on the product you want to trade, at the time the market learns of your order. Keep in mind there are 2 prices: bid and offer. If the current bid and current offer were the same, it would immediately result in a trade, and thus the bid and offer are no longer the same. Market Makers are paid / given lower fees in order to maintain buy and sell prices (called quotes) at most times. These conditions are usually all true, but commonly fail for these reasons: Most markets have an order type of market order that says buy/sell at any price. There are still sanity checks put in place on the price, with the exact rules for valid prices depending on the stock, so unless it's a penny stock you won't suddenly pay ten times a stock's value. *The amount you can buy sell is limited by the quantity that exists on the bid and offer. If there is a bid or offer, the quantity is always at least 1. You can ask for 305rs, but as long as shares are available at lower prices you won't sell. Only when your ask becomes the lowest available price will someone buy from you. See many past questions about how buyers and sellers are matched by the market. "You will almost certainly be able to sell 10,000 shares at once. The question is a matter of price. If you sell ""at market"" then you may get a lower price for each ""batch"" of the stock sold (one person buys 50, another buys 200, another buys 1000 etc) at varying prices. Will you be able to execute a single order to sell them all at the same price at the same time? Nobody can say, and it's not really a function of the company size. The exchange has what's called ""open interest"" which roughly correlates to how many people have active orders in at a given price. This number is constantly changing alongside the bid and ask (particularly for active stocks). So let's say you have 10,000 shares and you want to sell them for $100 each. What you need is at least 10,000 in open interest at $100 bid to execute. By contrast let's say you issue a limit order at $100 for 10,000 shares. Your ask will stay outstanding at that price and you'll be filled at that price if there are enough buyers. I you have a limit sell order at $100 for 10,000 shares the strike price of the stock cannot go to $100.01 until all of your sell orders are filled." "I think the question, as worded, has some incorrect assumptions built into it, but let me try to hit the key answers that I think might help: Your broker can't really do anything here.   Your broker doesn't own the calls you sold, and can't elect to exercise someone else's calls. Your broker can take action to liquidate positions when you are in margin calls, but the scenario you describe wouldn't generate them:  If you are long stock, and short calls, the calls are covered, and have no margin requirement.  The stock is the only collateral you need, and you can have the position on in a cash (non-margin) account.   So, assuming you haven't bought other things on margin that have gone south and are generating calls, your broker has no right to do anything to you. If you're wondering about the ""other guy"", meaning the person who is long the calls that you are short, they are the one who can impact you, by exercising their right to buy the stock from you.  In that scenario, you make $21, your maximum possible return (since you bought the stock at $100, collected $1 premium, and sold it for $120.  But they usually won't do that before expiration, and they pretty definitely won't here.  The reason they usually won't is that most options trade above their intrinsic value (the amount that they're in the money).    In your example, the options aren't in the money at all.   The stock is trading at 120, and the option gives the owner the right to buy at 120.* Put another way, exercising the option lets the owner buy the stock for the exact same price anyone with no options can in the market.  So, if the call has any value whatsoever, exercising it is irrational; the owner would be better off selling the call and buying the stock in the market." "EVERYONE buys at the ask price and sells at the bid price (no matter who you are). There are a few important things you need to understand. Example: EVE bid: 16.00 EVE ask: 16.25 So if your selling EVE at ""market price"" you are entering an ask equal to the highest bid ($16.00). If you buy EVE at ""market price"" you are entering a bid equal to the lowest ask price ($16.25). Its key to understand this rule: ""An order executes ONLY when both bid and ask meet. (bid = ask)."" So a market maker puts in a bid when he wants to buy but the trade only executes when an ASK price meets his BID price. When you see a quote for a stock it is the price of the last trade. So it is possible to have a quote higher or lower then both the bid and the ask." If the share is listed on a stock exchange that creates liquidity and orderly sales with specialist market makers, such as the NYSE, there will always be a counterparty to trade with, though they will let the price rise or fall to meet other open interest.  On other exchanges, or in closely held or private equity scenarios, this is not necessarily the case (NASDAQ has market maker firms that maintain the bid-ask spread and can do the same thing with their own inventory as the specialists, but are not required to by the brokerage rules as the NYSE brokers are).  The NYSE has listing requirements of at least 1.1 million shares, so there will not be a case with only 100 shares on this exchange. No, this isn't possible, especially not when you're trading a highly liquid stock like Apple. When you put in your buy order at $210, any other traders that have open limit sell orders with the correct parameters, e.g. price and volume, will have their order(s) filled. This will occur before you can put in your own sell order and purchase your own shares because the other orders are listed on the order book first. In the US, many tax-sheltered accounts like IRA's have specific rules against self-dealing, which includes buying and selling assets with yourself, so such a transaction would be prohibited by definition. Although I'm not entirely sure if this applies to stocks, the limitation described in the first paragraph still applies regardless. If this were possible, rest assured that high-frequency traders would take advantage of this tactic to manipulate share prices. (I've heard critics say that this does occur, but I haven't researched it myself or seen any data about it) A stock is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. If it trades different values on different days, that means someone was willing to pay a higher price OR someone was willing to sell at a lower price.  There is no rule to prevent a stock from trading at $10 and then $100 the very next trade... or $1 the very next trade. (Though exchanges or regulators may halt trading, cancel trades, or impose limits on large price movements as they deem necessary, but this is beside the point I'm trying to illustrate). Asking what happens from the close of one day to the open of the next is like asking what happens from one trade to the next trade... someone simply decided to sell or pay a different price.  Nothing needs to have happened in between. buy above the current price in the stock market You can do that, but what is the purpose to do so ? Brokers take the limit price of your order as the highest price you are going to pay. So if an order can be fulfilled below the limit they will do so.  can I sell below the current price  You can put in a order to do so. But what I have seen with my current broker is that the order never reached the market and wasn't executed at all. The broker might have some safeguards or process in place to stop me from doing so. Not sure how other brokers deal with it. "This information is clearly ""material"" (large impact) and ""non-public"" according to the statement of the problem.  Also, decisions like United States v. Carpenter make it clear that you do not need to be a member of the company to do illegal insider trading on its stock. Importantly though, stackexchange is not a place for legal advice and this answer should not be construed as such.  Legal/compliance at Company A would be a good place to start asking questions." Yes you can, provided if buyers are available.  Normally high liquidty stocks can be sold at market prices a little higher or lower.