Trade

Trade

Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another by getting something in exchange from the buyer. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and services. Later one side of the barter were the metals, precious metals (poles, coins), bill, paper money. Modern traders instead generally negotiate through a medium of exchange, such as money. As a result, buying can be separated from selling, or earning. The invention of money (and later credit, paper money and non-physical money) greatly simplified and promoted trade. Trade between two traders is called bilateral trade, while trade between more than two traders is called multilateral trade.

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Famous quotes containing the word trade:

    Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.
    —W.R. (William Ralph)

    My trade and my art is living. He who forbids me to speak about it according to my sense, experience, and practice, let him order the architect to speak of buildings not according to himself but according to his neighbor; according to another man’s knowledge, not according to his own.
    Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)

    I am cozily ensconced in the balcony of my face
    Looking out over the whole darn countryside, a beacon of satisfaction
    I am. I’ll not trade places with a king. Here I am then, continuing but ever beginning
    My perennial voyage....
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)