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LeetCode 121, Easy. Topics: Array, Dynamic Programming. View on LeetCode. Generate this problem as a practice environment: tested reference solution, 15 parametrized pytest cases, and a playground notebook:

Problem

You are given an array prices where prices[i] is the price of a given stock on the ith day. You want to maximize your profit by choosing a single day to buy one stock and choosing a different day in the future to sell that stock. Return the maximum profit you can achieve from this transaction. If you cannot achieve any profit, return 0.

Examples

Explanation: Buy on day 2 (price = 1) and sell on day 5 (price = 6), profit = 6-1 = 5. Note that buying on day 2 and selling on day 1 is not allowed because you must buy before you sell.
Explanation: In this case, no transactions are done and the max profit = 0.

Constraints

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

Solution

Reference implementation from solution.py on GitHub, full suite in test_solution.py:

Complexity

Tags

Grind 75, Grind, Blind 75, NeetCode 150, NeetCode 250, NeetCode All.
Last modified on August 25, 2026