121 Best Time to Buy and Sell Stock

Say you have an array for which the i _thelement is the price of a given stock on day_i.

If you were only permitted to complete at most one transaction (i.e., buy one and sell one share of the stock), design an algorithm to find the maximum profit.

Note that you cannot sell a stock before you buy one.

Example 1:

Input:
 [7,1,5,3,6,4]

Output:
 5

Explanation:
 Buy on day 2 (price = 1) and sell on day 5 (price = 6), profit = 6-1 = 5.
             Not 7-1 = 6, as selling price needs to be larger than buying price.

Example 2:

Input:
 [7,6,4,3,1]

Output:
 0

Explanation:
 In this case, no transaction is done, i.e. max profit = 0.

class Solution {
    public int maxProfit(int[] nums) {
        //[7,6,5,4,2,1] -> profit = 0
        //[7, 1, 3, 5, 2,6] -> 5
        //[7,6,5,3,2,1,5,7] -> 6
        //find the local minimum and see if there is any bigger number after that
        if (nums == null || nums.length <= 1) {
            return 0;
        }
        int localMin = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
        int max = Integer.MIN_VALUE;
        for (int i = 0; i < nums.length; i++) {
            if (nums[i] < localMin) {
                localMin = nums[i];
            }
            int diff = nums[i] - localMin;
            System.out.println(diff);
            if (diff > max) {
                max = diff;
            }
        }
        return max;
    }
}