Easy · Algorithms & Data Structures · Coding · ~10 min · #39

Best Single Round Trip

Given a list of daily prices, return the maximum profit from one buy followed by one later sell. If no profitable trade exists, return 0.

Implement max_profit(prices: list[float]) -> float in $O(n)$ time and $O(1)$ extra space.

Examples

Input: max_profit([7, 1, 5, 3, 6, 4])

Output: 5

Buy at 1, sell at 6.

Input: max_profit([7, 6, 4, 3, 1])

Output: 0

Prices only fall.

Give the problem an honest attempt first, then reveal the full explanation.

Running minimumSingle-pass algorithms

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