What is a “Bid/Ask”?

The stock exchanges provide the valuable service of bringing together all of the buyers and the sellers of stocks each day and matching the buyers and sellers that agree on a price. The exchanges keep track of all of the open orders and show the highest buy order price as the “bid price” and show the lowest sell order price as the “ask price.” The “ask” is the price the person who owns the stock is asking to sell his shares.