Investing term
What is Bid?
The highest price a buyer is currently willing to pay.
The bid is the highest price any buyer is currently willing to pay for a security. It sits just below the ask — the lowest price a seller will accept — and the difference between the two is the spread. The bid is the price you'll generally receive when you sell at market.
Because a market sell order fills at the bid, the quoted bid is what you'll actually get, not the higher 'last price' you may have seen ticking by. On liquid stocks the bid sits a cent or two below the ask and hardly matters; on thinly traded ones a low bid can mean selling for noticeably less than the number quoted, which is why the bid is worth a glance before selling anything obscure.
The bid is the highest price a buyer will pay — what a market sell fills at. On thin stocks a low bid can mean selling for noticeably less than the number you saw quoted.
For example
If the bid is $49.90 and the ask is $50.10, selling "at market" gets you $49.90 — the buyer's price, not the round number in the middle.
Learn it by doing
That's Bid 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 bid matters because it's the price you actually receive when selling, and — paired with the ask — it defines the spread you quietly pay to trade. Understanding that a market sell fills at the bid, not the last price or the midpoint, keeps you from overestimating what a holding will fetch. On illiquid securities the bid can sit well below the quoted price, turning a hasty market sell into a real, avoidable cost.
⚠ Overestimating what a sale will fetch
It's easy to assume you'll sell at the price you last saw, but a market sell fills at the bid, which can be lower — sometimes much lower on a thin stock. Counting on the higher number and then receiving the bid is a frequent surprise. On anything illiquid, a limit sell protects the price you actually want.