In the US, the stock and options markets are made up of several exchanges, including the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. The National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO) provides a consolidated view of the highest bid and the lowest ask (offered) price from all exchanges. NBBO was created by the Securities and Exchange Commission to help ensure that brokerages provide their customers with the best publicly available bid and ask prices when trading securities.

The bid and ask (also referred to as offer) shows the best quoted price for a stock or options among all exchanges. The ask price is what you, as the investor, could expect to pay when purchasing a stock or options on an exchange, and the bid price is what you could expect to receive when selling a stock or options on an exchange, at that point in time.

Like all brokers, we’re required to pursue best execution for our customers. We aim to have your order executed at the NBBO or better. You can learn more about our execution quality here.

The single-letter coding system is sometimes used to represent the name of an exchange. The table below shows the exchanges where NBBO pricing information is gathered.