Investing term
What is Ask?
The lowest price a seller is currently willing to accept.
The ask (or offer) is the lowest price any seller is currently willing to accept for a security. Pair it with the bid — the highest price a buyer will pay — and the small gap between them is the spread. The ask is the price you'll generally pay when you buy at market.
Because a market buy order fills at the ask, the quoted ask is your real cost of getting in, not the 'last traded' price you might have seen. On heavily traded stocks the ask sits a cent or two above the bid and barely matters; on thinly traded ones a wide ask can quietly raise what you pay well above the midpoint, which is why the ask is worth checking before you buy something obscure.
The ask is the lowest price a seller will accept — what a market buy fills at. On liquid stocks it's a cent above the bid; on thin ones a wide ask quietly raises your cost.
For example
If the bid is $19.98 and the ask is $20.02, buying "at market" fills you at $20.02 — the seller's price, not the midpoint.
Learn it by doing
That's Ask in theory — it clicks when you use it. Practise it hands-on in a free, interactive lesson (Stage 5, How Markets Work Globally).
Try the free lesson →Why it matters to you
The ask matters because it's the price you actually transact at when buying, and the gap between it and the bid is a real, invisible cost. On liquid stocks that gap is trivial; on illiquid ones it can dwarf any commission. Knowing that a market buy pays the ask — not the last price or the midpoint — is what stops you from being surprised by your fill, and nudges you toward limit orders on anything thinly traded.
⚠ Assuming you'll pay the 'last price'
The price ticking on a quote screen is usually the last trade, but a market buy fills at the current ask, which can be higher — especially on a thin stock where the ask sits well above the last print. Expecting to pay the number you saw, then getting a worse fill, is a common surprise that limit orders prevent.