Bitcoin Forum

I've been looking at the markets for Bitcoin recently (specifically MtGox, but I suspect this applies to all markets) and I've been a little confused by the terminology. I can take guesses at what most of the terms means, but I'd like to be certain.

The MtGox ticker shows six pieces of information, what do they all mean?

high
low
vol
buy
sell
last

high - highest price in the last 24 hours.

low - lowest price in the last 24 hours.

vol - amount of bitcoins exchanged in the last 24 hours.

buy - Current lowest selling price.

sell - Current buying price.

last - Last price bitcoins were sold at.

I am unsure if the time period is 24 hours...or 48 hours.

Thanks Kiba.

Presumably Last will always belower than or equal to Buy?

Not necessary. For example, what people want to sell might be higher than the last price posted.

Of course, that's fairly obvious when you say it ><

Is this back to front? buy is the selling price and sell is the buying price?

Buy is the lowest price you can buy bitcoins for.

Sell is the highest price a bitcoin buyer is willing to accept.

I hope that clear up the confusion.

I thought that was what you meant, but I wanted to make sure, thanks.

I tend to get bid and ask mixed up and for some reason it helps me to think of bid as how much is being offered for bitcoins and ask as how much is being demanded for bitcoins. No special meaning there, it's just the phrasing that helps for some reason.

I kept getting them mixed up in code, and came to the same method of thinking as you.Bid is the amount someone is "bidding" for coins, and ask is how much they're "asking", makes perfect sense, for some reason I still get them mixed up :/

The thing that you are buying goes from A -> B

Where A is the Asker, B is the Bidder

Using the terms 'bidding' and 'asking' like that still gets me mixed up. Just for some reason using the terms 'offering' and 'demanding' in conjunction with the terms 'ask' and 'bid' helps me. It's not clever and I don't know why it helps, so I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't help others like it helps me, but I thought I'd mention it just in case. Everyone uses their own methods to keep themselves from mixing things up.

Yeah I am glad i am not the only one who was confused by these meanings.One thing is for sure if you make a loss because you misunderstood you will be motivated to learn or pm the owner of the market for an explanation  :D

Even I get confused by the bidding and asking.

Well, MtGox treating of some of these values differs from commonly used in real stock/forex markets. This can especially be seen on its "japanese candlesticks chart". Here's the common meaning:

"high" value (not necessarily price) - highest value in given interval
"low" value - lowest value in the interval
"open" value - value at the beginning of the interval
"close" value - value at the end of the interval

In MtGox, the intervals seem to be 24 hours long, but their beginning and end are not clear. I think it's from midnight to midnight, but time zone is not known.

Terms "open" and "close" originate from real world exchanges, which are often not working 24 hours a day, so they "open" and "close". So "open price" was originally "the price when the market opens".

It's common to have two separate charts - one for "bid" price and the other for "ask" price. I cannot remember which is which either, and distinguish them only by their value - if I want to sell, I will obviously need high price, and if I want to buy, I need low price.

"All time" chart at MtGox treats "open" and "close" values quite differently. First of all, it charts not current ask or bid prices, but prices of actual deals, which is uncommon in real world trading.
 
"open" price at mtGox chart is the price during first deal in the interval
"close" price at mtGox chart is the price of the last deal in the interval

In real candlestick charts "close" price always equals "open" price of the next interval. At mtGox chart it's not the case, so it must look "broken" to people used to FX trading.