Ask
The lowest price a seller is currently willing to accept for an asset.
Also called: offer · ask price · best offer
Written by Javier Sánchez Ros
In plain language
The ask — also called the offer — is the selling side of the market. It is the cheapest price at which someone will hand you the asset right now.
If you buy immediately with a market order, you pay the ask. That is why a position is usually showing a small loss the instant it opens: you bought at the ask and it is being marked against the bid.
The ask always sits above the bid. The distance between them is the spread, and it is the first cost of every trade.
Worked through
Buying 500 shares when only 200 are offered at the ask
- Best ask
- $14.10 × 200
- Next ask
- $14.14 × 150
- Next ask
- $14.19 × 400
- Average paid
- $14.145
The screen says $14.10 and 200 shares are available there. The remaining 300 come from higher levels, so the real average entry is $14.145 — four and a half cents above the quote, on a purchase nobody would describe as large.
The ask is the price of the next share, not of your order. How far your order climbs past it depends entirely on how much size is resting at each level, which is a property of the instrument rather than of your intention.
For a trade with a 30-cent stop, four and a half cents is 15% of the risk budget, spent before the position exists. This is the argument for limit orders on entries in anything but the deepest instruments: on the way in you can usually afford to wait, and waiting is free.
Seen on a chart
Why it matters
Your entry price on a market buy is the ask, not the number on the chart. On wide-spread instruments that difference can be a meaningful share of your expected profit.
Common mistakes
- Planning an entry from the chart price and being surprised by the fill.
- Buying at the ask on illiquid instruments where a limit order a few cents lower would have filled anyway.
Keep exploring
These concepts are connected. Understanding one usually makes the next one easier.
The highest price a buyer is currently willing to pay for an asset.
The gap between the bid and the ask — the built-in cost of entering a trade.
An order to buy or sell at a specified price or better — it may not fill at all.
An instruction to buy or sell immediately at the best price currently available.
The difference between the price you expected and the price you actually got.