So, I thought I understood the concept of the bid/ask spread, but I am wondering why the price ($48.44) is higher than the Ask ($48.42 x 4100). Perhaps the Price and the spread are not necessarily related? I know this is a pretty simple question, but I cannot seem to find anything online beyond a 'Basic' explanation of the spread. TIA



BC

musickbc 

So, I thought I understood the concept of the bid/ask spread, but I am wondering why the price ($48.44) is higher than the Ask ($48.42 x 4100). Perhaps the Price and the spread are not necessarily related? I know this is a pretty simple question, but I cannot seem to find anything online beyond a 'Basic' explanation of the spread. TIA BC

What's the webpage displaying this, can you post a link?

48.44 is the last price traded, has nothing to do with current bid/ask.

kevinkdog 

48.44 is the last price traded, has nothing to do with current bid/ask.

Hi Kevin, can you elaborate?

xplorer 

Hi Kevin, can you elaborate?

Somebody bought at 48.44. That is the last price traded. Who knows when it actually occurred.

Right now, though, if you want to sell, you'd only get 48.41, and if you want to buy, you'd pay 4842.

In other words, the market has moved since the last trade.

kevinkdog 

Somebody bought at 48.44. That is the last price traded. Who knows when it actually occurred. Right now, though, if you want to sell, you'd only get 48.41, and if you want to buy, you'd pay 4842. In other words, the market has moved since the last trade.

Okay, thanks, that's how I thought then.

When you mentioned last price has nothing to do with bid/ask I thought I was missing something, but really what we're saying is that if we're buying or selling we expect to do so within the current bid/ask, in other words it works like in the futures (last time I watched a L2 stock was 2014 I think).

Depending on the stock's liquidity/frequency of trades, the last price traded may no longer be in sync with the bid/ask which in the meantime has moved.

Confusion cleared