What is an order book?
The live list of buy and sell orders for an asset on an exchange, arranged by price.
Bids are what buyers are offering; asks are what sellers are demanding. The gap between the best of each is the spread, and the volume stacked at each level is the depth.
Why it matters: the order book is where the price actually comes from — a quoted price is just the last trade, while the book shows what is available now. Reading depth tells you far more about whether you can exit a position than a price chart does.
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