What Are Bid and Ask Prices?
Every forex symbol streams two prices at once, and which one applies depends entirely on what your order is doing: buys deal at the ask, sells at the bid, and stop levels trigger on the side many traders do not expect. MetaTrader adds a twist by drawing its candles from bid prices only, so a perfectly normal fill can appear to float above the chart. Taking the quote apart side by side — who sets the two prices, which one each order type touches, and how that shows up in the trade history — makes fills, stop-outs and wicks line up again.
Key takeaways
- Dealers quote both directions at once: the bid is where they buy from you (sell orders fill there), the ask is where they sell to you (buy orders fill there).
- The ask always sits above the bid; the gap between them is the spread, a per-trade cost covered in its own guide.
- MetaTrader candles are built from bid prices. The ask is visible only as an optional live line in the chart properties — historical bars never record it.
- Bid-side orders (sell stops, sell limits, long stop losses) fire in line with the chart; ask-side orders (buy stops, buy limits, short stop losses) fire while the chart shows price one spread below the level.
- An entry or exit arrow printing slightly above a candle is usually the spread at work, not slippage — check fills against the correct side of the quote before judging execution.
Two prices, because dealers quote both directions
Forex has no central exchange matching buyers with sellers at one official price. Prices come from dealers — banks and liquidity providers that stand ready to trade either way at any moment. Quoting both directions is what makes them dealers: each publishes a price at which it will buy from you and a slightly higher price at which it will sell to you, and earns its living in the gap. How those quotes reach a retail platform is part of the wider market structure.
The bidis the dealer’s buying price: when you sell, you sell to the dealer, so sell orders fill at the bid. The ask(or offer) is the dealer’s selling price: when you buy, you buy from the dealer at the ask. With GBP/USD quoted 1.2701 / 1.2703, a sell fills at 1.2701 and a buy at 1.2703.
Ask
1.2703
The dealer sells to you here — every buy order fills at this price.
Spread
2 pips
Bid
1.2701
The dealer buys from you here — every sell order fills at this price.
That gap is the spread — the transaction cost embedded in every position, and a number that changes size through the day. What it costs and why it widens has its own guide; here the point is simply that the gap exists, because every mechanical consequence below follows from it.
Which price each order actually uses
Every instruction you can give the platform reduces to a buy or a sell, and that alone decides its side of the quote. The rule has no exceptions: buys deal at the ask, sells at the bid — including closes, which are just orders in the opposite direction to the position they close.
| Action | Price used | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Buy (market entry) | Ask | Buying means taking the dealer's selling price. |
| Sell (market entry) | Bid | Selling means taking the dealer's buying price. |
| Close a long position | Bid | Closing a buy is a sell. |
| Close a short position | Ask | Closing a sell is a buy. |
| Buy stop / buy limit | Ask | Pending buys trigger and fill on the ask. |
| Sell stop / sell limit | Bid | Pending sells trigger and fill on the bid. |
| Stop loss on a long | Bid | It is a pending sell order. |
| Stop loss on a short | Ask | It is a pending buy order. |
| Take profit (long / short) | Bid / Ask | Exits use the side of their closing direction. |
The rows worth memorising are the last few. A stop loss is not a special order type — it is a pending sell when it protects a long and a pending buy when it protects a short, and it inherits the matching side of the quote. That one fact explains most “my stop should not have fired” confusion.
Charts draw the bid — the ask lives one spread above
A candle can only be built from one price series, and the MetaTrader convention is the bid: every open, high, low and close on an MT4 or MT5 chart is a bid price. The ask is available as an optional horizontal line, switched on in the chart properties — but it is a live line only. Historical bars keep no record of where the ask was.
The practical consequence: everything that happens on the ask side happens one spread above what the chart shows. Whether an order fires in line with the candles or offset from them depends only on its side of the quote:
In line with the chart (bid-side)
Sell stops, sell limits, and stop losses or take profits on long positions. They execute on the bid — the same series the candles are drawn from — so the order fires exactly when the chart touches the level.
Offset from the chart (ask-side)
Buy stops, buy limits, and stop losses or take profits on short positions. They execute on the ask, so they fire while the bid-based chart still shows price one spread below the level.
A GBP/USD short, stopped without the chart touching the level
Watching the ask while the chart draws the bid
- Quote: GBP/USD bid 1.2701 / ask 1.2703 — a 2-pip spread.
- Sell 0.20 lots — the entry fills at the bid, 1.2701, exactly where the chart is printing.
- Stop loss placed at 1.2731. Closing a short is a buy, so this stop watches the ask.
- Price rises. When the bid prints 1.2729, the ask stands at 1.2731 — the stop fires.
- Exit fills at 1.2731: a 30-pip loss, about $60 at $2 per pip on 0.20 lots.
- The candle high records 1.2729. On the chart, price never reached 1.2731.
Nothing went wrong in that sequence — the platform monitored exactly the price it was supposed to. The mirror image applies to entries: a buy placed at the same moment as that short would have filled at 1.2703 while the chart printed 1.2701, two pips below the recorded fill.
Reading fills against the chart in your trade history
The account history stores the executed price of every deal, while the chart those deals are plotted on is bid-based. Fills therefore split into two families: sell-side prices (short entries, long exits) sit on the candles, and buy-side prices (long entries, short exits) sit slightly above them — by the spread at the moment of execution.
- A long entry a couple of points above the candle high of its minute is normally just the spread, not poor execution.
- A short stop-out above the visible high by roughly the typical spread is the mechanics from the example above, working as designed.
- A fill well beyond what the spread can explain is a different matter: the gap between requested and executed price is slippage, with its own causes and its own guide.
Separating the two is easiest with the records side by side. A journal built from your own MetaTrader history keeps each deal’s executed price, so comparing long and short fills against the candles — symbol by symbol — shows whether the offsets you see are routine spread or something worth a closer look.
Frequently asked
Why did my short trade's stop loss trigger when the chart never reached it?
Charts draw bid prices, but a stop loss on a short position is a buy order, so it triggers when the ask reaches the level. The ask sits one spread above the bid, which means the candle high can stop a spread short of your stop level at the moment it fires — and further short if the spread was wider than usual at the time.
Which price do MetaTrader charts show, bid or ask?
Candles on MT4 and MT5 are built from bid prices. You can enable an ask line in the chart properties to see the buy side in real time, but it is a live line only — historical candles remain bid-based, so ask-side events leave no trace in past bars.
Which price does a pending buy order fill at?
Buy limits and buy stops both execute on the ask. A buy limit at 1.2690 fills when the ask falls to 1.2690, which with a 2-pip spread means the bid-based chart prints about 1.2688 at that moment — the chart moves through the level before the order fills.
Do take profits follow the same rules as stop losses?
Yes. Exits use the side of their closing direction: a take profit on a long position is a sell, so it fills at the bid; a take profit on a short is a buy, filling at the ask. Long exits therefore line up with the chart, while short exits sit one spread above it.
Related guides
What Is Spread in Forex?
The bid/ask gap as a per-trade cost: fixed vs variable spreads, why they widen, and what frequent trading adds up to.
How the Forex Market Works
Currency pairs, bid/ask, spreads, pips and why no two brokers show exactly the same price.
What Is Slippage in Trading?
Requested vs executed price, positive and negative slippage, and why stop orders can fill far beyond their level.
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Sources & further reading
- MetaTrader 5 Help — Chart settings — the chart properties controlling the bid and ask line display on price charts.
- MetaTrader 5 Help — Market Watch — where both sides of the quote are streamed for every symbol in the terminal.
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This article is for educational purposes only. It does not provide trading signals, investment advice, financial recommendations, broker recommendations or trade execution.