best bid
Best Bid means the highest price any buyer is currently offering for a share, and it is the most you can be sure of getting if you sell right now.
In plain English
Here is a mistake many new investors make without realising it. They check the price of a stock on their app, see it says ₦52, and place a sell order expecting ₦52 to land in their account. Then the trade goes through at ₦49 and they feel cheated, as if the platform did something shady.
Nothing shady happened. That ₦52 was probably the last traded price, or the price someone is asking for, not the price a buyer was actually willing to pay at that moment. The Best Bid is the true answer to the question, what will someone actually pay me for this right now. It is the highest price among everyone currently standing ready to buy.
Think of it like selling a used generator in Alaba market. Three people look at it. One says he will give you ₦45,000, another says ₦48,000, and a third says ₦50,000. The Best Bid is ₦50,000, the top offer on the table. If you accept it, that is what you walk away with. Anyone quoting a higher number without actually offering it does not count.
On the Nigerian Exchange, if you own shares in a bank like GTCO and want to sell immediately, your broker's screen shows the Best Bid, which might be ₦48.50, even though the last person who traded it paid ₦49. That gap between the two numbers is normal and it is called the spread.
This matters a lot for someone abroad sending investment instructions home, or anyone trading on a platform like Trove or Chaka. Before you tap sell, glance at the Best Bid rather than trusting the headline price. It tells you what the market will genuinely give you today, not what you wish it would give you.
A share last traded at ₦120, but the current Best Bid is ₦117.50 and the Best Ask is ₦118.20. If you place a market sell order now, you get ₦117.50 per share, not ₦120, because ₦117.50 is what real buyers are actually offering.
Questions people ask
Is the Best Bid the same as the last traded price?
No. The last traded price tells you what happened in the past, sometimes minutes or hours ago. The Best Bid tells you what buyers are offering right now, which can be higher or lower depending on how the market has moved since that last trade.
Why is the Best Bid usually lower than the price I see advertised?
Because the price you often see first is the asking price, set by sellers who want more, or the last traded price, which is old news. Buyers, being buyers, tend to offer a bit less than sellers ask, and that honest gap is the spread.
Can I sell above the Best Bid?
Yes, by placing a limit order at the price you want instead of a market order. But your shares will only sell if a buyer eventually agrees to pay that price. If nobody does, your order simply waits, sometimes for a long time.
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