How should I practice Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock?

Start by reading the full statement, solve the visible examples, then compare the pattern against related Kotak Mahindra Bank onsite interview problems in FastPrep.

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Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock

Kotak Mahindra Bank● EasyFULLTIMEONSITE INTERVIEW

Problem statement

You are given an array prices, where prices[i] is the price of one share of a stock on day i.

You may make at most one trade: buy one share on one day, then sell it on a later day. Return the largest profit you can make. If no trade makes money, return 0.

Function

maxProfit(prices: int[]) → int

Examples

Example 1

prices = [7,1,5,3,6,4]return = 5

Buy on day 1, when the price is 1, and sell on day 4, when the price is 6. The profit is 6 - 1 = 5.

The price 7 on day 0 is higher, but it comes before day 1, so you cannot sell there after buying at 1.

Example 2

prices = [7,6,4,3,1]return = 0

The price falls every day, so every possible trade loses money. The best choice is not to trade, which gives 0.

Example 3

prices = [2,4,1]return = 2

The lowest price, 1, is on the last day, so there is no later day to sell it. The best trade is to buy at 2 on day 0 and sell at 4 on day 1, for a profit of 2.

Constraints

1 <= prices.length <= 10^5
0 <= prices[i] <= 10^4