Market Versus Quote - MVQ

The prices for stocks (and other items that trade on markets) get decided by an auction system.

On the surface, it may seem like a stock has a single price. You log into your brokerage account or you google a stock price. You're shown that one price...the market price. Basically, this figure represents the most recent price the stock sold for. It looks similar to an item selling on Amazon, just the product with a price. Either pay that price or don’t buy it.

But, behind the scenes, there exists a more dynamic system comprised of bids and asks.

A bid represents someone declaring to the market, "Hey, I'd buy this many shares at this price." An ask consists of someone making a similar declaration about how many shares they'd be willing to sell for a particular price. Bids get matched with asks...that process sets the market price.

The term "Market Versus Quote" describes the difference between the most recent market price (that's the "market" part) and the current bid and ask prices (the "quote," in Wall Street lingo).

It works like this: you've got DIS trading at $130 a share (the market price). Meanwhile, the last bid came in at $129.75 and the most recent ask called for a price of $130.25. Those figures compute to an MVQ of $0.25. The market price for DIS is $0.25 off the most recent bid/ask for those shares.