# 💦 Liquidity

By [Let Them Eat Cake](https://paragraph.com/@ltecake) · 2022-06-21

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TL,DR: Liquidity, like freshness, indicates a products readiness for consumption

Liquidity / Freshness “If the food is stale, you know it ain’t good” - Anthony Bourdain

Financials

Most common stocks are highly liquid, meaning there are many buyers and sellers for the product. It can be easily acquired or sold, which lowers the risk of taking a long or short position in the product, because an investor can always exit the position. Bonds are less liquid, and sometimes require soliciting a price from the market when a sale is desired.

Market Makers / Grocers To encourage market activity, many large financial institutions serve as market makers, which means they have committed to always buying or selling a stock from investors looking to trade, even if they are not able to find investors on both sides of the transaction. Without market makers, consumer confidence in financial products would be significantly declined. If you entered a grocery store and found a bunch of unfamiliar products that no one is buying, you would be hesitant to make a purchase. The fixed income market suffers from a liquidity problem, which we’ll address later.

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*Originally published on [Let Them Eat Cake](https://paragraph.com/@ltecake/liquidity)*