Best Stock Profit Calculation | Dataford Interview Questions

A First Citizens BancShares market-monitoring component receives daily closing prices for a stock. Given the prices in chronological order, determine the maximum profit possible from exactly one purchase and one sale.

You must buy on one day and sell on a later day. If no profitable transaction is possible, return 0. Do not reorder the prices or perform multiple transactions.

Formal Specification

Implement max_profit(prices).

Input: prices, a list of integers where prices[i] is the stock's closing price on day i.
Output: An integer representing the largest possible profit, calculated as sell_price - buy_price.
The transaction must satisfy buy_day < sell_day.

Constraints

0 <= prices.length <= 10^5
0 <= prices[i] <= 10^9
At most one buy and one later sell are allowed
Return 0 when no positive profit is possible

Function Signature

def max_profit(prices):

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