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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltar who wrote (51250)	7/14/1998 2:20:00 PM
From: Dennis	Respond to of 176387

no it is not an average. I teach High School so I will go into my teacher mode even though it is summer. Ask, what you pay when you buy a stock. Bid, what you get when you sell a stock. The difference goes to the middle man. Your objective is to give him or her as little as possible. You are one up on me if you own dell and you are only 18 !! I wonder how much it will be worth when you turn the ripe old age of 30 !! Regards

To: Zoltar who wrote (51250)	7/14/1998 2:26:00 PM
From: Ken Beal	Respond to of 176387

Bid is the price the market makers will buy the stock from you; ask is the price they ask you for when selling to you. (I've also heard "ask" referred to as "offer".) The difference is called the spread. The spread is where the market makers make their money. Generally spreads are fairly thin (1/16 to 1/4), although I've seen spreads of a dollar and a half before. The exact value you see is the last trade that happened. This can be either at the bid or the ask, or in between -- which is why it's helpful to know the closing bid and ask, and not just the closing "price" (since it could be anywhere between the bid and ask). A real-world example: say DELL's bid and ask are 108 1/2 by 108 9/16 (which it is currently; that's a 1/16 spread). Now, say DELL closes at 108 1/2. You can tell that the last trade was a sale, because it's at the bid. If DELL then opens at the same bid and ask, but the first trade is 108 9/16, then the first trade was a buy. DELL would never open there, though -- it'll be 110 by tomorrow. ;-) Cheers, KenB