What you need to know about Market Makers

Good mornin’ ☕️, good afternoon 🍺, good evenin’ 🥃

I'm Ary, from ESNQ News, and I'm here to break down this week's behind-the-scenes of a market — in under 5 minutes — helping you lose less money, make smarter trades and investments, and be the interesting one in conversations about weather and traffic — and, let’s be real, PTA meetings.

Let’s get into it:

📹️ The Scene

So imagine you’re walking up to a currency exchange booth at an international airport.

You want to convert $1,000 into Euros.

The board shows two prices: $1.08 to buy one euro, $1.06 to sell.

That $0.02 difference right there?
That's called the spread, and it's how the currency exchanger makes money.

Now multiply this concept by billions, add computer algorithms operating at lightning speed, and you've got the basics of modern market making. Easy peasy, right?

But there's a catch:
Market makers aren't just currency exchangers for stocks, they're more like the performers at Cirque Du Soleil — constantly juggling inventory, risk, and customer orders while walking a tightrope of profitability.

And one slip can cost millions. No pressure.

🕵️ The Invisible Intermediary

Meet Tom (no, not that Tom), a market maker at a major Wall Street firm.

It's 9:29 AM in New York — just one minute before the market opens.

His screens show thousands of orders waiting to execute.