price at which the owner of a security, financial instrument, or other asset is willing to sell. Also called the asked price. This differs from the bidprice, or the price a buyer is willing to pay. The bid and asked quotes are the prices a dealer is willing to pay, and the price a dealer wants to charge, respectively. The bid price is always the lower of the two prices. Buyers, who can be individual investors or large institutions, pay the offered price, or the price asked by the seller, frequently after negotiating from the original bid-asked quote.
- manifestation of willingness to enter into an agreement.
- promise, commitment to do or refrain from doing some specified thing in the future.
- in the securities trade, indication of price and volume available from open market sellers of stocks and bonds.
- underwrite in which a broker offers a large quantity of a specific issue at a fixed price, called an offering.
price at which someone who owns a security offers to sell it; also known as the asked price. This price is listed in newspapers for stocks traded Over The Counter. The bid price-the price at which someone is prepared to buy-is also shown. The bid price is always lower than the offer price.
application for a policy, in life insurance, accompanied by the first premium; in property and casualty insurance, the insurance application itself.
terms of a contractual agreement made by a seller pending acceptance by the buyer-for example, a magazine subscription offer of 12 issues for $9.95. The order form in this case becomes a legal contract once it is filled in and returned by the subscriber to the publisher. All advertising sales messages are offers and are governed by laws relating to legal agreements, such as the Federal Trade Commission antitrust laws.
an expression of willingness to purchase a property at a specified price or of willingness to sell. In real estate an offer is made by either party to the other.
Example: Lincoln places a property on the market. Murray makes an offer to buy the property for $150,000. Lincoln may accept the offer, reject the offer, or propose a counteroffer.
