As I understand it, if four people are queueing up to buy stock A for [$10, $9, $8, $7] and four other people are in line to sell for [$10, $11, $12, $13] then the people at the front match up and swap one unit of stock for $10, and the stock exchange lists A as being last valued at $10.
Stock B’s order books have four buyers at [$10, $1, $1, $1] and four sellers as [$10, $99, $99, $99]. Again the matching buyer and seller exchange $10 for one unit of stock, the exchange shows B on its ticker for $10, and we say that company A and company B have the same value.
B’s future looks a lot more bleak. Buyers say it’s a junk stock, only worth a dollar. Sellers claim the company is way under-valued: you need the best part of a hundred dollars to convince them to give up their share.
People say these things in real life — retail investor blogs, Mad Money, fund forecasts etc. — but those are just words compared to actual buy/sell orders. Do exchanges give us insight into what their order books actually look like, instead of just quoting the last price where a buyer and seller matched?
I want this problem to be symmetric in such a way that A and B truly do have the same value, as shown by the market, but something about the $1 buy price for B feels more important than the $99 sell price. I think it’s because buyers have actual dollars — the things we need to buy food and shelter — so what they say is more important than what B’s snake-oil stock-sales people claim.