What’s the difference between bid and ask? Liquid

For example, if an investor wanted to sell a stock, he or she would need to determine how much someone is willing to pay for it. It represents the highest price that someone is willing to pay for the stock. Bid-ask spread, also known as “spread”, can be high due to a number of factors. When there is a significant amount of liquidity in a given market for a security, the spread will be tighter. Stocks that are traded heavily, such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft will have a smaller bid-ask spread. The middle rate, also called mid and mid-market rate, is the exchange rate between a currency’s bid and ask rates in the foreign exchange market.

• While it may seem immaterial or easy to overlook, the bid-ask spread is a real cost to investors, and in extreme cases it may amount to a non-trivial percentage of the trade’s value.
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• The touchline is the highest price that a buyer of a particular security is willing to bid and the lowest price at which a seller is willing to offer.
• At other times, especially when prices are moving slowly, it pays to try to buy at the bid or below, or sell at the ask or higher.
• In the active futures markets, the tick is used—generally, the spread is one tick.
• Tight bid-ask spreads are a hallmark of efficiently priced markets.

You simply tell your brokerage the number of shares that you want to buy or sell. We’re transparent about how we are able to bring quality content, competitive rates, and useful tools to you by explaining how we make money.

Can someone explain a stock’s “bid” vs. “ask” price relative to “current” price?

The bid price, on the other hand, is the highest price a prospective buyer is willing to pay for a security, and the bid-ask spread is the difference between them. High liquidity in a financial market​ is often caused by a large number of orders to buy and sell in that market. This liquidity enables you to buy and sell closer to the market value price.

The number ‘33.0’ between the buy and sell price represents the bid-ask or buy-sell spread. This spread is derived by subtracting the sell price from the buy price. The bid price, more commonly known as simply the ‘bid’, is defined as the maximum price that a buyer is willing to pay for a financial instrument. As the current price represents the market value of a financial instrument, the bid and ask prices represent the maximum buying and minimum selling price respectively.

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If you click your buy button, your trade will open way above the current price, right at that red line. If you’re not aware of the spread you may ruin a trade completely. The spread is the price difference between the Bid price and the Ask price. The last price is the price where the last transaction occurred. Stack Exchange network consists of 182 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.

In the case of security, if it is expected that the stock price will rise, then the buyer would purchase the security at a price that he considers fair. The price at which the buyer is willing to purchase the stock is called the Bid. In the future, when the prices fall, the buyer is now a seller. He will now quote a price that he considers selling in which bid vs ask he can make maximize his profit; that price is known as the Ask. Together, they indicate the best price at which securities can be bought and sold at a particular time. The bid price is the highest amount a buyer is willing to pay for a security, such as a share of a stock. The ask price is the least amount the seller is willing to accept for that security.

What is a good bid-ask spread?

This could also make it difficult at times to generate a profit as the security will always be bought at a higher price and will be sold at a lower price. The bid-ask spread, or the bid and ask spread, is the difference between the bid price and the ask price of an instrument. For example, the difference in price between someone buying a stock and someone selling a stock represents the bid-ask spread. John is a retail investor looking to purchase stocks of Security A. He notices the current stock price of Security A is at $173 and decides to purchase 10 shares for $1,730. To his confusion, he noticed that the total cost came out to $1,731.

Our editorial team does not receive direct compensation from our advertisers. All of our content is authored by highly qualified professionals and edited by subject matter experts, who ensure everything we publish is objective, accurate and trustworthy. Imagine you are trading a stock that is going against you tremendously, but every time you place your https://www.bigshotrading.info/ sell limit order it drops by 1% before your order is executed. Now, if you are buying a thousand shares for example at market, you may fill at multiple price points if the ask continues to rise. What if you are a buyer but are unwilling to pay the full asking price? Similar to what you do when you purchase a car, you offer a little less than the MSRP.