Hello Babypips Community,
I have a quick question. If you are “bidding” on a currency is that the same as taking a short trade? And if you are “asking” on a currency is that the same taking a long trade? Or am I getting it confused. Also could someone explain the picture to me?
Thank You.
Hi Sammy,
In currency trading, “bidding” and “asking” are about the prices for buying and selling currencies, but they’re different from deciding to bet on currencies rising or falling.
Bidding means offering a certain price to buy a currency. It’s not about selling a currency you don’t own in hopes its value drops (that’s called a “short trade”).
Asking is when a seller sets a price they’re willing to accept for their currency. This isn’t the same as buying a currency hoping its value increases (known as a “long trade”).
In essence, bidding is buying at the buyer’s price, and asking is selling at the seller’s price. A “long trade” is when you buy expecting the currency’s value to go up so you can sell it at a profit, while a “short trade” means selling a currency you expect to decrease in value, planning to buy it back cheaper.
The image you have on your post shows exactly that - The Buy [Ask] and Sell [Bid] prices for the Euro Dollar currency pair.
The ‘Buy’ price for a potential buyer is the asset’s ask price, as this is what they need to pay to acquire the asset.
The ‘Sell’ price for a potential seller is the asset’s bid price, because this is what they will receive when they sell the asset.
In summary, the ‘BUY’ and ‘SELL’ buttons show the current buying and selling prices for a currency pair. These prices help traders decide when to buy (at the ask price) or sell (at the bid price) a currency, based on their predictions and strategy.
I trust that helped, and will answer your questions to the best of my ability. 
- Apologies for my spacing - but I’ll use HTML or markdown in future to make my posts and responses more ‘readable’…
The difference between bid price and ask price is important, and many people get it wrong.
Thank You for the reply. Here I have an image. If I understand the image, the blue Buy is the “ask” and the red Sell is the bid. And for the lot size it has 2.00 meaning its 2 standard lot = 200,000 unit of that currency. Is this correct? Thank You.
Hi Sammy, yes that is correct
