Quote
A quote is the current price of a stock: what buyers are offering, what sellers are asking, and what the last trade went through at.
The gap between the bid and the ask is the spread, and it is a real cost — buy at the ask and sell at the bid and you lose the difference without the price moving at all. Big companies have spreads of a cent; small ones can be much wider.
Prices also differ slightly between sources, because there are many exchanges and each sees its own trades.
In Stoxhatch
Prices come live from the IEX feed. IEX is one exchange rather than the full consolidated tape, so a quote can differ a little from Google or Yahoo Finance.
Related
- Market and limit orders — A market order buys at whatever the price is now; a limit order only buys at the price you name, or better.
- Extended hours — Extended hours are the stretches before and after the 9:30am–4:00pm ET session when stocks still trade, but with far fewer buyers and sellers.
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