Ask/Offer

The ask (also called the offer) is the price at which someone is currently willing to sell a security. If you want to buy right now instead of waiting, the ask is the price you'd have to pay.

Every tradable security has two live prices ticking alongside each other: the bid, which is the highest price a buyer is currently offering to pay, and the ask, which is the lowest price a seller is currently willing to accept. When you place a market order to buy, it fills at the ask (or works its way up through several asks if the order is large). When you place a market order to sell, it fills at the bid.

The gap between the two is the bid-ask spread, and it's effectively a built-in cost of trading. A stock with a tight spread — say a penny wide on a heavily traded name — is cheap to get in and out of. A stock with a wide spread, common in thinly traded or low-volume names, means you lose a noticeable chunk just by buying and immediately selling at the quoted prices.

The nuance that trips people up: the ask isn't "the price" of a stock, it's one side of a two-sided market. Financial news headlines and chart candles usually show the last traded price, which sits somewhere between bid and ask, so a quote screen showing bid and ask separately can look confusing at first. Also, the ask you see is only for a certain size (number of shares) — a big order can "eat through" multiple price levels and get a worse average price than the first ask displayed.