How many cents separate MSFT's bid and ask, by share of quotes
Answered against 22 years of US equities and 12 years of US options data and published with the query that produced it. This result is stored as of 2026-10-09, from What Limit Price Should I Set on a Stock?.
| spread_width | share_of_quotes_pct | quote_count |
|---|---|---|
| 1 cent wide | 2.9 | 1326 |
| 2 cents wide | 5.2 | 2411 |
| 3 cents wide | 8.5 | 3955 |
| 4 cents wide | 13.8 | 6397 |
| 5 cents wide | 15.7 | 7265 |
| 6 cents wide | 17.5 | 8105 |
| 7 cents wide | 20.4 | 9437 |
| 8 cents wide | 15.9 | 7379 |
- Rows × columns
- 8 × 3
- Computed
- Completeness
- No missing values
- Source
- US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data
- Licence
- Strasmore terms · free, no signup
What each column holds
| Column | Type | Range | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
spread_width |
text | 8 distinct values (1 cent wide, 2 cents wide, 3 cents wide…) | |
share_of_quotes_pct |
number | 2.9 to 20.4 | percent |
quote_count |
number | 1,326 to 9,437 | count |
Computed from Strasmore's warehouse of US exchange, SIP and OPRA market data. Equity prices are delayed; options greeks and implied volatility are end-of-day. This result is stored, not recomputed on load — it is exactly the numbers that were returned on , and the query below is what returned them.
Run it yourself
This is the exact query behind the result above. Change a ticker, a date or a column and run it against the warehouse — no account, no key. The no-signup tier is smaller than the one this page was computed on; a query that reaches past it comes back saying which plan runs it.
WITH quotes AS
(
SELECT toUInt32(round((toFloat64(ask_price) - toFloat64(bid_price)) * 100)) AS ticks
FROM global_markets.cache_stocks_quotes
WHERE ticker = 'MSFT'
AND sip_timestamp >= '2026-09-15 14:00:00'
AND sip_timestamp < '2026-09-15 19:00:00'
AND bid_price > 0
AND ask_price > bid_price
AND (toFloat64(ask_price) - toFloat64(bid_price)) <= 0.08
)
SELECT
concat(toString(ticks), if(ticks = 1, ' cent wide', ' cents wide')) AS spread_width,
round(100 * count() / (SELECT count() FROM quotes), 1) AS share_of_quotes_pct,
count() AS quote_count
FROM quotes
GROUP BY ticks
ORDER BY ticks
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