Stock Market Quotes are the prices of the company stocks available in the stock market either for buying or for selling. The prices one could watch in the Share Trading Terminals ready to be matched are known as the Stock Market Quotes. These are normally the highest bid and lowest ask prices of a stock displayed on a Quotation Board.
Bid Price is the price which a buyer offers to a seller for buying a share usually referred as bid. It is the highest price quoted by a buyer of a share. In the practical world, Bid price refers to the price available to an investor for selling the share.
Ask or Offer price is the price offered by the seller for accepting to buy the share. It is the lowest quoted price offered by a seller to sell a share. In the practical world, Ask price refers to the price available to an investor for buying the share.
The last traded price of a stock is known as the Quoted Price of the same.
Stock Market Quotes are an important ingredient of the Share Market because it gives important signals to the traders for gauging the mood of the market and act accordingly. Bid-Ask Spread gives the intraday traders an idea about the demand and supply scenario of the concerned stock which helps them decide the direction of their trade, ie. Long it or short sell it. The difference between the quoted buying (bid) price and the selling (ask) price of a share at a given time is known as the Bid/Ask Spread.
Stock Market is an order driven market where an investor gives either a buy or a sell order. If the order finds a match in the system and gets executed then the order is known as Active Order. But if it doesn't find a matching order then it gets submitted in the order book and waits for a suitable match for getting executed which is known as the Passive Order.
The different Stock Market Quotes available in NASDAQ are Info Quotes, Flash Quotes, Pre-Market Quotes and After Market Hour Quotes on price, volume, etc.
Hence, Stock Market Quotes are an inevitable part of the stock market and helps the investors (especially the intraday traders) in making decisions about trade.