Find the Maximum Profit from Stock Transactions
Last updated: October 30, 2025
Quick Overview
Given an array of stock prices over time, find the maximum profit achievable with at most two buy-sell transactions. You must sell before buying again.
Intuit
October 30, 20256
3
2,186 solved
Given an array of stock prices over time, find the maximum profit achievable with at most two buy-sell transactions. You must sell before buying again.
Appears on Glider assessments. Financial-themed problems are common at Intuit. Tests dynamic programming and the ability to handle constraints in financial calculations.
What the Interviewer Expects
- Solve optimally in O(n) time and O(1) space
- Handle edge cases like monotonically decreasing prices and single-day input
- Explain the state transition logic clearly
- Write clean code with descriptive variable names related to the financial domain
- Discuss how the approach generalizes to k transactions
Key Topics to Cover
How to Approach This
- Clarify input constraints and edge cases before writing code.
- Walk through your approach verbally and confirm with the interviewer before coding.
- Start with a brute force solution, then optimize. Mention time and space complexity.
- Test your solution with examples, including edge cases like empty input or duplicates.
- Consider common patterns: sliding window, two pointers, hash map, BFS/DFS, dynamic programming.
Possible Follow-up Questions
- How would you extend this to allow at most k transactions?
- What if there is a transaction fee for each buy-sell pair?
- How would you handle this with a cooldown period between transactions?
- Can you solve this using dynamic programming on states?
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Problem Analysis
This problem can be approached using a dynamic programming technique, specifically focusing on state transitions to track profits from stock transactions. The key is to recognize that we need to maint...
Approach
- Initialize Variables: Start by defining four variables to keep track of the maximum profits:
first_buy,first_sell,second_buy, andsecond_sell. Setfirst_buyandsecond_buyto nega...
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