what is ask 
the ask is the price a seller is willing to accept for a security which is often referred to as the offer price along with the price the ask quote might also stipulate the amount of the security available to be sold at the stated price the bid is the price a buyer is willing to pay for a security and the ask will always be higher than the bid understanding askthe terms bid and ask are used in nearly every financial market in the world including stocks bonds foreign exchange and derivatives an example of an ask in the stock market is 5 24 x 1 000 which means that someone is offering to sell 1 000 shares for 5 24 per share the ask is always higher than the bid the difference between the two numbers is called the spread a wider spread makes it harder to make a profit because the security is always being bought at the high end of the spread and sold at the low end spreads can widen sharply with unusually volatile trading or when there is a great deal of uncertainty over the direction of the price stock market spreadsin 2001 stock prices changed from being quoted in sixteenths to decimals 1 that brought the smallest possible spread from 1 16 of a dollar or 0625 to one penny the width of a spread in nominal terms will depend in part on the price of the stock a spread of two cents on a price of 10 is 0 02 while a spread of two cents on a price of 100 is 0 002 foreign exchange spreadsspreads in the wholesale market in which financial institutions deal are tight the spreads vary by currency because the value of a point varies a typical spread when trading the euro versus the dollar is between 1 and 2 points this means that the bid might be 1 3300 which is the number of dollars needed to buy one euro with an offer of 1 3301 a single point on a transaction of 10 000 000 and a eur usd rate of 1 3300 is worth 751 at 110 japanese yen to the dollar the value of one point on a 10 000 000 transaction is 909 the bid ask spread for cross currency transactions such as the euro versus the japanese yen or the british pound is usually two to three times as wide as spreads versus the dollar this reflects both lower trading volume and higher volatility spreads in the retail market have tightened considerably with the increased popularity of electronic dealing systems these allow small traders to view competitive prices in ways that only large financial institutions could do in the past this has pushed spreads down as low as 3 to 10 points at times bank note spreadsbuying and selling banknotes in foreign currencies is a separate market from either wholesale or retail foreign exchange spreads are likely to be 75 pips or more 