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Technology Stocks : Creative Labs (CREAF) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dennis G. who wrote (6841)	12/9/1997 12:17:00 PM
From: Jon Tara	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13925

Dennis, that is correct. However, size is practically meaningless on NASDAQ stocks. What the example really means is that the one particular market-maker who is making the best bid is offering 20,000 shares to sell. The one particular market-maker who is making the best offer wishes to buy 9000 shares. If there are multiple market-makers at the bid/ask (as there usually are) the size still only represents ONE of them. (I beleive the one that was there first.) There are other market-makers with orders, and even the two market-makers mentioned above may have additional shares to bid/offer even at the current price, which they may choose to withhold from the quote. On NYSE and AMEX stocks, the size is the SUM of all bids at the best bid price and the SUM of all offers at the offer price. In the case of NYSE and AMEX, the size actually has some meaning.