**An average investor can choose a price to offer—but cannot force someone else to accept it.** Also, stocks and ordinary mutual funds have different pricing mechanisms.

For a stock, you can submit a **limit order** through a brokerage: “Buy 10 shares for no more than $50 each,” or “Sell my shares for no less than $52 each.” Your order may remain unfilled if nobody is willing to trade on those terms. A **market order**, by comparison, accepts the best available prices. [SEC explanation of order types](https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/how-stock-markets-work/types-orders)

Think of stock trading as a continuing auction. In a simplified example:

- Sellers offer 100 shares at $50 and another 100 at $50.10.
- A buyer purchases the first 100 shares at $50.
- If another buyer accepts the next offer, the next trade happens at $50.10.

The reported last-traded price has now risen. Nobody needed to press a “raise the stock price” button. Buyers accepted the available offers. Prices can fall through the same process when sellers accept progressively lower bids. Participants also change their bids and offers, so quotations can move even before another trade occurs.

**Your mutual fund example works differently.** An ordinary open-end mutual fund issues and redeems shares at its next calculated **net asset value (NAV)**, with applicable fees. NAV per share is the value of the fund’s assets minus its liabilities, divided by its outstanding shares. You therefore don’t negotiate a bid price—and the price shown when you submit an order may not be the price you ultimately receive. [SEC explanation of mutual funds](https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/investment-products/mutual-funds-and-exchange-traded-funds-etfs/mutual-funds)

So mutual fund managers, hedge funds, individual investors, and market makers all participate in stock price formation through their orders. Large orders can have more impact because they may exhaust the shares available at a particular price. An average investor’s order usually has little visible effect in a heavily traded stock, but it still participates in the same process.