How Market Quotes Work

What Is a Market Quote?

A market quote is a real-time or near-real-time summary of a financial instrument's trading activity. It tells you the most recent price at which a trade occurred, what buyers and sellers are currently willing to pay, and how much activity has taken place during the day. You will find quote tables like these on commodity pages, currency pages, stock pages, and across every other asset class covered on this site.

The tricky part is not finding a quote — it is knowing what each field actually means. A single number sitting in a table is close to useless without knowing the unit it is measured in, the venue it came from, and the moment in time it reflects. The rest of this guide unpacks every piece.

The Core Fields: Last, Bid, Ask, and Spread

The last price (sometimes labeled "price" or "close") is the price of the most recent completed trade. It is a historical fact the instant it is printed — by the time you read it, the market may have moved.

The bid is the highest price a buyer is currently willing to pay. The ask (also called the offer) is the lowest price a seller is currently willing to accept. Trades happen when a buyer agrees to pay the ask or a seller agrees to accept the bid.

The spread is simply the gap between the bid and the ask. If the bid is $99.90 and the ask is $100.10, the spread is $0.20. The spread is a rough measure of a market's liquidity — tight spreads typically indicate a deep, active market; wide spreads suggest thinner trading conditions. You can read more about how this affects trading costs in Market Liquidity, Explained.

Daily Change and Percent Change

The change column shows how much the last price has moved compared to the previous session's closing price. If yesterday's close was $100.00 and today's last price is $103.00, the change is $3.00. The percent change expresses that same move as a fraction of the starting price — in this example, 3%.

Percent change is almost always more useful than the raw dollar change. A $3.00 move means something very different on a $10 stock than on a $1,000 instrument. For longer-horizon views — week, month, year-to-date, year-over-year — the same logic applies; those columns just use a different starting price as the reference point. Day, Week, YTD, YoY: Reading Percentage Moves goes deeper on how each column is calculated.

Volume and OHLC

Volume is the total number of units — shares, contracts, coins, or lots, depending on the market — that have changed hands during the current trading session. High volume often accompanies significant price moves; low volume can mean a move is less widely confirmed. Economists and analysts typically treat volume as a secondary check on price signals rather than a standalone indicator.

OHLC stands for Open, High, Low, Close — the four key prices recorded over a given time period. The open is the first traded price when the session begins. The high and low mark the extremes reached during the day. The close (or settlement) is the final price when the session ends, and it becomes the baseline for calculating the next day's change column.

You will often see the day's high and low shown right on a quote line, sometimes written as a range (for example, "102.40 – 106.80"). This range tells you how much the price swung within a single session — a useful quick read on that day's volatility. OHLC data is also the foundation of candlestick charts, which are covered in detail in Reading Price Charts.

Why the Unit Always Matters

One of the most common points of confusion is that the same raw number means completely different things depending on what it is measuring. A price is never just a price — it is a price per something.

• Crude oil is quoted in US dollars per barrel (one barrel = 42 US gallons). A standard futures contract covers 1,000 barrels, so a $1.00 move in the quote means a $1,000 change in the value of one contract.
• Gold is quoted in US dollars per troy ounce. A troy ounce is about 10% heavier than the everyday avoirdupois ounce (31.1 grams vs 28.35 grams). A standard gold futures contract covers 100 troy ounces.
• Wheat and corn are quoted in US cents per bushel. Because the price is in cents, a quote of "540" means $5.40 per bushel, not $540.
• Stock indexes like the S&P 500 are quoted in index points, not dollars. The points are a weighted mathematical construct — they do not directly equal a currency amount unless you are trading an index-linked instrument.
• Currency pairs are quoted as an exchange rate: how many units of the quote currency one unit of the base currency buys. See Currency Pairs: Base, Quote and What EURUSD Means for a full breakdown.

A full reference for commodity-specific units and contract sizes lives in Barrels, Bushels and Troy Ounces: Commodity Units.

Why Two Sources Can Show Different Prices

It is perfectly normal to look up the same instrument on two different platforms and see slightly different numbers. There are a few common reasons.

Different venues. Many commodities and currencies trade on multiple exchanges or in decentralized over-the-counter markets simultaneously. The WTI crude price on the New York Mercantile Exchange and a broker's platform may differ by a few cents due to fees, location, or quoting conventions.

Different contracts. Futures markets have multiple expiry dates trading at once. The front-month contract (the one expiring soonest) is usually the headline quote, but a different platform might display the next month's contract. Because of contango and backwardation, those prices are not the same. The guide Spot vs Futures Prices explains how the two relate.

Different timestamps. Financial data feeds update at different speeds. A quote that was accurate 15 seconds ago may already be stale in a fast-moving session. Some data providers display delayed quotes (often 15 or 20 minutes behind) unless you have a live feed.

Worked Examples: A Commodity Row and an FX Row

Example 1 — A Commodity Quote

Suppose a crude oil data table shows the following (all figures are hypothetical examples):

Reading this row: the most recent trade was at $80.45 per barrel. A buyer right now would pay $80.47; a seller would receive $80.43 — a spread of $0.04. Compared to yesterday's close, the price is up $1.15, which equals a 1.45% gain. During the session, prices ranged from a low of $79.10 to a high of $80.60 — a $1.50 intraday swing. About 312,000 contracts traded hands; because each contract covers 1,000 barrels, that represents roughly 312 million barrels of notional volume.

Example 2 — An FX Quote

Now suppose a currency table shows (again, purely hypothetical):

Reading this row: one euro currently buys 1.0852 US dollars. The euro is the base currency; the US dollar is the quote currency. The spread is 0.0002 (two pips), which is typical for a heavily traded major pair. The euro has risen 0.0031 against the dollar compared to the previous close — a 0.29% move. The day's range shows it traded as low as 1.0820 and as high as 1.0865, a span of 45 pips. Unlike the oil example, there is no volume figure shown — FX is an over-the-counter market with no single central exchange, so published volume data is incomplete by nature.