mastertonster

BlueHorseshoe, thanks for your thorough explanation. Those are definitely helpful to my learning of the market. If you don't mind I follow up with a couple more questions.. I wanna see if I understand correctly. So, in any given moment, with any stock, any bid/ask spread. The prices at Bid or Ask are "passive orders" entered by Market Makers? what about people like myself? Are my buy or sell orders(say lower than bid or higher than ask) buried within a long queue of orders? Sorry. I'm a little confused. :doh: I understand market makers' job is to provide liquidity in the market, but then why are certain stock have so illiquid and have huge bid/ask spread? Does this mean they're not involved in the particular stock? Thank you.

Hi, stock trading is pretty new to me. And I'm here to hopefully learn from you experienced traders about all things related to stock markets. I have some basic understanding of the market but I have a long way to go. My questions may sound stupid but here they are.. From my understanding, at any given moment, bid is the highest purchasing price some buyer had entered his order for. And the ask price is the lowest a seller had enter his sell order. I also understand that market makers are suppose to take the opposite side of the trade whenever someone enters the order. But it sound kind of weird. If I were to buy at Ask, who am I exactly getting the shares from? the market maker? or some counter party- a traders like myself who has entered a sell order priced at the Ask.. Another question is, I've heard all the stock transactions have all become electronic in recent decade. Do market makers still exist? Where are they physically? Were they the one's standing on the exchange floors hollering back and forth? Can someone please explain? Thank you.