The Bid/Ask Spread is important factor in trading, whether it is stock trading, options trading or pretty much any other asset. The Bid Price is the current highest price at which someone in the market is willing to buy a stock. The Ask Price is the current lowest price that someone is willing to sell a stock. The difference in these two amounts is called the Bid/Ask Spread.

The Bid/Ask Spread is determined mainly by liquidity. If a stock is highly liquid, meaning there is a large volume of shares being bought and sold, the Bid/Ask Spread will be much lower. A low Bid/Ask Spread is important to traders because the extra cost that you pay in the spread will eat away at the profits of your trades.

For example, on the stock CAH, if the Bid Price is $69.33 and the Ask Price is $70.33 the Bid/Ask Spread would be $1.00. If you were to buy 100 shares and then immediately sell them using market orders (assuming everything stays the same and not factoring in commissions) your loss would be $100 just because of the spread. Higher volume stocks such as MSFT can have spreads as low as a couple cents.

David Kosmider

Though he studied history and political science in college, he first became interested in technical analysis in the mid-1990?s and has been in constant study of a variety of technical indicators and methods since then. The first professional work in this field was as a research analyst for a major financial newsletter firm. Later he developed his own system, which became the basis for the Pivot Strategy Newsletter. He now also runs TimingResearch.com's ETF Market Timer service and it's free weekly Mid-Week Report Newsletter.