Who determines the bid price? Is it the buyers or the sellers?

Question

If a stock is priced as follows:

Ask = $10.00

Bid = $9.90

Who determines the bid price and the ask price??

Answer 1

The ask is what the seller is asking for the price. The bid is what the buyer is bidding as a price. If the seller accepts the bid price, the stock goes down. And, if the buyer decides to pay the asking price, the stock goes up.

Answer 2

The ask is what the seller is willing to accept for a security, aka "offering price."  This is the opposite of bid, which is the price a buyer is willing to pay for a security, and the ask will always be higher than the bid.

Answer 3

The market place itself determines the bid price as well  as the ask price,   The current market quotation is always the highest bid and the lowest offering.  

The entire stock market is one big auction market, buyers are constantly bidding to buy either at higher or lower prices and at the same time, sellers are constantly offering stock for sale at a price,

Securities that are traded on an exchange, it is the specialist responsibility to see that there are always bids and offerings and at reasonable prices.   If there is neither a bid or an offering, the specialist will step in a make a bid and/or offering.

Answer 4

The stock market has always been one big auction.

Buyers stand around or call in and Bid on stocks, so the buyers are bidding to buy a stock at a given price.

Sellers are also standing around (or calling in) and asking (offering) to sell their stock at a given price.  

So you have bidders (buyers) and sellers (offering/asking) each with different price.   The  highest bidder and the lowest offering is what makes the quote.  

Answer 5

Although it is a combination of both, the buyer to a larger degree determines the bid price. For example, let's say on a stock that is in a temporary loll, one adjusts the limit price to buy at $9.90, the bid typically will drop. Then raise the limit to $9.98 and watch the bid price go up. The seller, with the limit, will effect the Ask.