Bid and Ask: the price you actually trade at

Every quote carries two numbers, not one. Knowing which one you fill at is the condition for
placing orders correctly — and for not
misreading why a position is negative the second it
opens.

1. The two prices

• Bid — where the broker will buy from you. The price you get when you
  sell.
• Ask — where the broker will sell to you. The price you pay when you
  buy.

Ask is always above Bid. The gap is the
spread.

2. The immediate consequence

You buy at the Ask, but the position is marked to the Bid. Which means a new buy is down
by the spread from the start. That is not a glitch and not the broker skimming — it is the
cost of entry, showing up immediately.

For a sell it runs the other way: you sell at the Bid, and the position is marked to the Ask.

3. Which price the chart is drawn from

By default MetaTrader draws candles from the Bid. That causes two common
misreadings:

• A buy’s stop loss is swept before the candle
  gets there. A buy’s stop triggers on the Bid — the very line you are watching. But place it
  a few points under the candle low and a spread blowout can drag the Bid down to it.
• A sell’s stop loss triggers on the Ask, which sits above the drawn line by
  exactly the spread. The candle never reaches your stop on the chart and the position closes anyway —
  entirely normal.

The fix: turn on the Ask line in MetaTrader (Chart properties → Show → Ask line) and watch both.

4. What the spread tells you about the market

The spread is not fixed. It reports directly on how deep the order book is:

• Tight and steady → good liquidity, plenty of
  willing buyers and sellers.
• Suddenly wide → liquidity has withdrawn, usually before or during a release.

A good habit: read the spread before clicking. If it is unusually wide against what you normally
see, that is a signal to wait a few minutes.

5. Applying it to pending orders

• Buy Limit / Buy Stop fill on the Ask.
• Sell Limit / Sell Stop fill on the Bid.

If you place a pending buy exactly at a
support level read off the chart — which is a Bid line — it will fill later than you expect, by
exactly the spread. On a sensitive level, add or subtract the spread when you place it.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Conditions and fee levels are published by the brokers and can change at any time — check with the broker you actually use. Leveraged forex and CFD trading carries a high level of risk and can cost you your entire deposit.