The price of what?

So far we have talked about a bicycle, but the thing being recorded can be almost anything: a metal such as gold, a small share of a company, the ratio between two countries' money, or an asset that exists only digitally. All of these are products. Collectively, the industry also calls them instruments.

A record holds exactly two things: the number and the time. It does not hold the product's name, what it is for, or who sold it. That is why you cannot tell from a record which product it belongs to; you always have to know that from outside.

Two products can carry completely different numbers: one barely moves, the other shifts noticeably from day to day. But the reading is identical in both — oldest on the left, newest on the right, and behind every number a buyer and a seller who agreed. The reading you are learning holds for every product you will meet.

A bigger number does not mean the product is "worth more". One product may read 12 and another 40,000; those two numbers measure different things and cannot be compared with each other. A record gives you the numbers of its own product only — never a ranking between products.