Marshell called the price that equated supply and demand the equilibrium price. If the price was above the equilibrium, farmers would want to sell large quantities of grain. But few merchants would want to buy - there would be excess supply. Then, even the merchants who were willing to pay that much would realize that farmers would soon have to lower their prices and would wait until they did. If the price was below the equilibrium, sellers would prefer to wait rather than sell at that price. If, at the going price, the amount supplied did not equal the amount demanded, Marshell reasoned that some sellers or buyers would benefit by charging some other price, the going price was not a Nash Equilibrium. So the price would tend to settle at an equilibrium level, where demand and supply were equated