Glossary · How do you trade forex?Ask price
The ask, or offer, is the price at which you can buy a currency pair right now. It is the higher of the two prices in every forex quote. You open a buy trade at the ask, and you close a sell trade at the ask.
The ask is the price the market asks you to pay for the base currency. The bid and ask lesson explains both prices and the gap between them.
Where the ask sits in a quote
The ask sits above the bid price, and the distance between them is the spread. On 29 October 2026 at 16:35 UTC, an Exness Standard account quoted EUR/USD at 1.11605 bid and 1.11613 ask.
The ask applies to every order that buys. That covers opening a long position and closing a short one, as set out under long and short positions.
Why the ask matters on sell trades
A sell trade is closed by buying back at the ask. MetaTrader draws forex charts from the bid, so the ask does not appear on the candles unless you switch on the ask line.
Here is a worked example with round illustrative prices. You sell EUR/USD at 1.10000 with a stop loss at 1.10100. Around a news release the spread widens to 3.0 pips while the bid is at 1.10075.
The ask is then 1.10075 + 0.00030 = 1.10105, which reaches your stop. The trade closes even though the bid on your chart is still 2.5 pips below the stop.
Questions
Is the ask price the same as the offer price?
Yes. Ask and offer are two names for the price at which you can buy.
Why is the ask price always higher than the bid?
Whoever quotes both prices buys from you at the lower one and sells to you at the higher one. The gap between them, the spread, is a cost you pay once on every round trip.
More terms in this chapter
PipA pip is the standard unit for measuring a change in a forex price. On most currency pairs it is 0.0001, the fourth decimal place, and on pairs quoted in Japanese yen it is 0.01. One tenth of a pip is called a pipette.
PipetteA pipette is one tenth of a pip, shown as the extra last digit of most forex quotes. On EUR/USD it is 0.00001, the fifth decimal, and on yen pairs such as USD/JPY it is 0.001. Traders also call it a fractional pip.
Pip valuePip value is the amount of money a one pip move adds to or takes from a position. It equals the pip size times the units traded, counted in the quote currency. On one standard lot of EUR/USD in a US dollar account it is $10.
LotA lot is the standard unit of trade size in forex. One standard lot is 100,000 units of the base currency, a mini lot is 10,000 and a micro lot is 1,000. MetaTrader shows these sizes as volumes of 1.00, 0.10 and 0.01.
Market orderA market order is an instruction to buy or sell straight away at the best price available. A buy fills at the ask and a sell at the bid. You get a fast fill but not a guaranteed price, so in a fast market the fill can slip.
Pending orderA pending order is an instruction to trade later, once price reaches a level you set. Limit orders wait for a better price than now; stop orders wait for price to break through a level. Until it triggers, no position is open.
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