Explain a Stock Trading Algorithm | Dataford Interview Questions

Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock I: given prices[i], choose one buy day and a later sell day to maximize profit; return 0 if no profit (e.g. [7,1,5,3,6,4] -> 5).

Asked in the Round 1 stage.

Implement max_profit(prices).

Input and Output

prices is a list of integers, where prices[i] is the stock price on day i. Return an integer representing the maximum profit from exactly one buy followed by one later sell, or 0 when no profitable transaction exists.

Constraints

1 <= len(prices) <= 10^4
0 <= prices[i] <= 10^5
The buy day must occur before the sell day
At most one transaction is allowed

Function Signature

def max_profit(prices):

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