A Financial Quotation refers to specific Market data relating to a security (finance) or commodity. While the term quote specifically refers to the bid or ask of an instrument, it may be more generically used to relate to the last price which the security traded at ("last sale"). This may refer to both exchange-traded and over-the-counter financial instruments. Example of a stock chart, the stock shown is VA Software Ticker tape was used by ticker tape machines, stock ticker machines, or just stock tickers. ... Security is a type of transferable interest representing financial value. ... The word commodity is a term with distinct meanings in business and in Marxian political economy. ...

Bid and Ask

The bid and ask (or offer) of a security are the prices (and often quanties) at which buyers and sellers are willing to purchase or sell. The bid shows the current price at which a buyer is willing to purchase shares, while the ask shows the current price at which they are willing to sell. The quantities at which these trades are placed are referred to as "bid size" and "ask size." For instance, if a trader submit a limit order to buy 1000 shares of MSFT at $28.00, this order will appear in a market maker for MSFT's book (finance) with a bid of $28.00 and a bid size of 1000. A market maker is a person or a firm which quotes a buy and sell price in a financial instrument or commodity hoping to make a profit on the turn or the bid/offer spread. ...

Equities

Level 1 Access

Level 1 quotations represent realtime bid/ask data, the most commonly displayed market data. Level-1 data typically will display the Best-Bid-Offer ("BBO" or "Inside Quote"), i.e. the highest ask and lowest bid available at the time for a given security. It may or may not display quote size.

Level 2 Access

Level 2 data displays the top-of-book for each market participant in a given security. In other words, at a given time there may be several market makers participating in trade-matching for a specific stock. Level-2 data will display the highest offer and lowest bid for each market maker.

So-called Level 2 Information is of some interest to Stock Market day-traders and brokers/dealers as it typically depicts the buying and selling pressure behind individual stocks and other securities quoted on markets around the world.

Similar in format to live streaming share prices, a typical Level 2 screen is split in two vertical halves and will show orders on both the bid price of a security (left hand side) and the offer price (right hand side).

On major heavily traded stocks the "depth" of the orders can quite often be in excess of 20/30 orders to both buy and sell at lower (left) and higher (right) prices.

Traders can use this live information to predict the short-term movement of a share or security in conjunction with volume traded, and attempt to profit from this information, which is usually legal as the information is in the public domain. The reason for this is that Market Makers sit “behind” such a screen by being obliged to both buy and sell the share at the posted price up to what is known as normal market size.

For certain market centers such as Nasdaq, a full depth-of-book (DOB) is available, whereby every quotation for every market participant is displayed.

See also

Look up Quote in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Market data
• Stock Exchange