re: Question about how stocks work?

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I’ve never heard of someone not being able to purchase a stock, or having to wait for them to become available?

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That is because most companies share counts are above millions of shares. Typical trading volume of larger companies can easily get in the millions per day.

Most people buying and selling stock are trading large companies.

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I’ve never heard of someone not being able to purchase a stock, or having to wait for them to become available?

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If you place a “market” order, the order will be filled at the best available price. If the stock has really low volume, this could mean buying at the ask price even though that’s significantly higher than the current ticker price. If you then turned around and placed a market sell order, it could mean selling at the bid which could be significantly lower than the price you just paid. Basically this means that immediately after buying the stock, you can only sell at a loss unless the stock price increases enough to overcome the bid-ask spread.

There are enough shares on the major exchanges that you can always buy or sell a stock, you just may not get a fair price.