Ask price
Family VII · Market & styles
Not to be confused with bid price, bid ask spread.
Ask price (also called the offer) is the lowest price a seller will accept for a security at a given moment. It is the counterpart to the bid price and the higher of the two numbers in a quoted market. A buyer crossing the spread pays the ask to acquire the asset immediately.
How the ask price is formed
The ask price is set by the lowest-priced resting sell order in the order book. If no seller is willing to sell at that level, the ask moves to the next available offer. The ask is therefore a live, order-driven figure, not a fixed property of the asset.
Quoted ask prices usually reflect the best available offer across the venues a broker or data provider includes. The size available at the ask is the quantity a buyer can take at that price before the ask moves higher.
Worked example
A trader buys 100 shares of a stock quoted with a bid of 50.00 and an ask of 50.02. The ask is the price paid for an immediate purchase.
The bid-ask spread on this quote is 0.02, or two cents per share.
What moves the ask
The ask changes as sellers add, cancel or fill orders. It can widen or narrow with liquidity, volatility and the time of day. In less liquid markets the ask may sit far above the bid, and the size available at the best ask may be small.
For any given instrument, the ask is one side of the quote; the bid is the other. Data feeds may label the ask as the offer, and some markets display the ask before the bid.
Often confused with
- bid price
- The bid price is the highest price a buyer will pay, while the ask is the lowest price a seller will accept; the bid is the lower number in a quote and the ask is the higher.
- bid ask spread
- The bid-ask spread is the difference between the two prices, not either price itself; it is calculated by subtracting the bid from the ask.