RE: What is the spread?5 Jan 2025 04:17
napalm1. it's the difference between the bid (sell price) and the ask (buy price)
this is set by people called market makers, they are bit like wholesalers, this price is based on many things, market sentiment, volumes of sales and purchases, and other details of the company like past performance, future expectations, and debt.
these prices have to be different, and the bid price has to be lower, if not you could buy some shares then sell them straight away and make money.
the actual price you pay or get is somewher in between, a request to sell is nearer the bid price, a request to buy is nearer the ask price.
the actual price you pay is set by brokers at the moment you try to buy or sell, they have x amount of shares to get rid of, if they can't get rid of them they will quote a lower sell price, if many people are trying to buy they will quote a higher price. if you place a limit on your buy or sell price you may never even sell or buy.
it means that usually the more people that buy, the price goes up, the more peple that sell, the price goes down, it is like supply and demand, if everyone wants the shares then there are less to go around, so they become relatively more valuable, if everyone sells there are lots to go around, so more difficult to get rid of and so less valuable.
how these figures are arrived at is much more complicated than the above explanation, so these bid prices, ask prices, and quoted prices don't always make sense to us.
why is the spread important? for me, it mainly means that if the spread is very big when you buy, then it takes much more upward movemnt to recover your initial outlay.
if the spread is 2p then the price rises by 3p then your in profit, if the sprad is 15p then the price needs to rise by at least that much to break even, so your wait to get into profit might be longer. and that doesn't take into account any charges you may have paid.
looking at the spread can help you to decide to buy now or wait till it gets narrower.
the problem with neo is that the spread moves around a lot , almost by the minute.
i hope that helps.
if anyone has a problem with my explanation don't take the ****, just politely put it right with a better explanation.