Where your estimated share price comes from

Your strike price comes from a 409A valuation: a formal appraisal a company commissions, typically once a year, to set the price at which options can be granted. It is deliberately conservative and exists for tax-compliance reasons.

The estimated share price ExitCue shows is something else — a reference drawn from what buyers and sellers have actually been doing with that company's shares on the secondary market. The two routinely differ, sometimes by a lot, and neither is wrong. They answer different questions.

Every price ExitCue displays is tied to a date it was observed. Between observations, the most recent one carries forward and is labelled as such — the line on your chart goes flat rather than inventing a path between two points.

Nothing here is projected. Charts stop at the last real observation, and a gap in the history is shown as a gap instead of being smoothed away. That is why an estimate can sit unchanged for weeks and then move sharply: activity, not a model, drives it.

Confidence scales with activity. A company whose shares trade often produces a well-supported reference; a thinly traded one produces a price from few observations, with wider uncertainty and staler dates. The Liquidity Grade exists to make that distinction visible instead of leaving every price looking equally solid.

Secondary activity also reflects who is transacting and why. Sellers needing liquidity, restricted supply, and share class differences all move it, and a secondary price for common stock is not the same thing as the preferred price a headline valuation is calculated from.