A bid price is a price offered by a buyer/bidder when he buys a good. The bid price is usually just referred to as the bid. The bid price stands in contrast to the ask price or the offer, and the difference between the two is called the bid/offer spread. Ask price, also called offer price, is a price a seller of a good is willing to accept for that particular good. ... The bid/offer spread is the difference between the buying (bid) and selling (offer) price of the same stock or currency transaction. ...
The bid price displayed in most quote services is the highest bid price in the market.
In the context of stock trading on a stock exchange, the bid price is the highest price a buyer of a stock is willing to pay for a share of that given stock. The bid price last offered is the price that is shown on ticker tapes like those of the CNBC Ticker that is shown on the TV channel CNBC. Ticker tape was used by ticker tape machines, stock ticker machines, or just stock tickers. ... The CNBC Ticker is a computer simulation of ticker tapes shown on the lower part of the TV screen on the business television channel CNBC from Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, in the U.S. The CNBC Ticker shows security and index symbols just like old ticker tapes that received information... CNBC (until 1991 the Consumer News and Business Channel) is a group of cable and satellite television news channels from the U.S., owned and operated by NBC Universal, a joint venture of General Electric and Vivendi Universal. ...
In the context of the over-the-counter market, the term "bid" refers to the highest price a market maker will pay at any given time to purchase a specified number of shares of a stock.
The term "ask" refers to the lowest price at which a market maker will sell the stock.
The ask price (also known as the "offer" price) will almost always be higher than the bidprice.