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Because of this, active traders in particular may want to pay attention to the bid-ask spread. For example, if a stock price has a bid price of $100 and an ask price of $100.05, the bid-ask spread ...
Since buying and selling stock is a key component of investing, it’s important for investors to understand trading terminology — especially the term "bid-ask spread."
The bid–ask spread (also bid–offer or bid/ask and buy/sell in the case of a market maker) is the difference between the prices quoted (either by a single market maker or in a limit order book) for an immediate sale and an immediate purchase for stocks, futures contracts, options, or currency pairs in some auction scenario.
For instance, if a trader submits a limit order to buy 1,000 shares of MSFT at $28.00, this order will appear in a market maker for MSFT's book with a bid of $28.00 and a bid size of 1000. The difference between the bid and ask price is known as the bid–ask spread.
Ask price, also called offer price, offer, asking price, or simply ask, is the price a seller states they will accept. [1] The seller may qualify the stated asking price as firm or negotiable. Firm means the seller is implying that the price is fixed and will not change. In bid and ask, the term ask price is used in contrast to the term bid price.
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The bid-ask ticker contained only the two prices and no size. The volume of data on the last sale ticker was therefore much greater than on the bid-ask ticker. Because of this, on high volume days the last sale ticker would run as much as fifteen minutes behind the bid-ask ticker.
The highest bid and the lowest ask are referred to as the top of the book. They are interesting because they signal the prevalent market and the bid and ask price that would be needed to get an order fulfilled. The difference between the highest bid and the lowest ask is called the bid–ask spread.