Order book, bid, ask and spread on UZSE explained

The last trade price is what most people look at first, but it only tells you what happened. The order book tells you what can happen next: who is waiting to buy, who is waiting to sell and at what prices. On the Republican Stock Exchange «Toshkent» (UZSE), where some shares trade many times a minute and others a few times a week, reading the order book is one of the most useful habits an investor can build. This guide explains the terms and walks through examples.

What the order book is

Every limit order that has not yet been filled rests in the exchange's trading system. Grouped by price, those resting orders form the order book:

• The buy side lists bids: prices at which buyers are willing to buy, highest first.
• The sell side lists asks, also called offers: prices at which sellers are willing to sell, lowest first.

UZSE matches orders by price first and time second: the highest bid and the lowest ask have priority, and at the same price the earlier order fills first (trading system structure, as of 26 September 2026). So the top of each side is where the next trade will happen.

UZSE publishes a summary of this for each security on its quotation page: the best sell price with the total sell quantity and the best buy price with the total buy quantity (uzse.uz, as of 26 September 2026). During the single-price auctions before the open and before the close, the exchange also makes the indicative matching price and volume public.

Bid, ask and spread

• Best bid: the highest price a buyer is currently offering. If you sell right now with a market order, this is roughly where you sell.
• Best ask: the lowest price a seller is currently asking. If you buy right now with a market order, this is roughly where you buy.
• Spread: best ask minus best bid.

A spread is the price of immediacy. If you buy at the ask and immediately sell at the bid, you lose the spread, before any commission.

It is often more useful as a percentage of the midpoint, the average of the best bid and best ask:

• Spread % = (ask − bid) ÷ ((ask + bid) ÷ 2) × 100

Worked example

The figures are illustrative. Suppose a share shows:

• Best bid: 9,900 UZS for 400 shares
• Best ask: 10,100 UZS for 250 shares
• Last trade: 10,000 UZS

The spread is 10,100 − 9,900 = 200 UZS. The midpoint is 10,000 UZS, so the spread is 2% of the price. If you bought 100 shares at the ask (1,010,000 UZS) and sold them straight back at the bid (990,000 UZS), you would be 20,000 UZS worse off before commissions, although the "price" of the share did not move at all.

Compare a share with a bid of 9,990 and an ask of 10,000 UZS. The spread is 10 UZS, about 0.1% of the price. The same round trip costs 1,000 UZS per 100 shares. Same last price, very different cost of trading.

Depth: what sits behind the best prices

The best bid and ask show only the top of the book. Behind them are more orders at worse prices. That is depth. A book might show 250 shares at the best ask, then 1,000 shares a few steps higher. If you want 800 shares, the best ask alone cannot fill you, and a market order would walk up to the higher levels. Limit orders vs market orders works through such a case with numbers.

Two practical checks:

1. Compare your order size with the quantity at the best price. If your order is larger, expect to pay more on average, or use a limit order and accept a partial fill.
2. Look at total quantities on each side. A large total on the buy side and a small one on the sell side can mean buyers outnumber sellers at the moment. It is a snapshot, not a forecast: orders can be cancelled or changed at any time while unfilled.

Why tick size sets a floor on the spread

Prices on UZSE move in fixed steps, the tick size, which depends on the price range (trading system structure, as of 26 September 2026). For example:

• Below 1,000 UZS, the step is 0.01 UZS.
• From 1,000 to 5,000 UZS, it is 5 UZS.
• From 10,000 to 50,000 UZS, it is 50 UZS.

The smallest possible spread is one tick, so the minimum spread in percentage terms depends on where the price sits within its range. A share priced at 1,005 UZS with a one-tick spread (1,005 bid, 1,010 ask) already has a spread of about 0.5%. A share priced at 4,995 UZS with a one-tick spread pays about 0.1%. A share priced at 95 UZS, with a step of 0.01 UZS, can in principle have a spread of about 0.01%. Keep this in mind when you compare spreads across shares: part of the difference is simply the price grid.

Common and preferred shares have separate books

Many UZSE companies have both common and preferred shares, and each class has its own ticker and its own order book. On 25 September 2026, for example, Hamkorbank's common shares (HMKB) closed at 95.5 UZS with 331,811 shares traded that day, while its preferred shares (HMKBP) closed at 105.98 UZS with 15,398 traded (HMKB and HMKBP on uzse.uz, as of 25 September 2026). Always check the book for the exact class you want to trade. Preferred vs common shares explains the differences.

Reading the book without being misled

• The last price can be stale. In a share that last traded hours or days ago, the last price may sit far from the current bid and ask. The bid and ask tell you more about what you could trade at now.
• An empty side is information too. If there are no sellers, a buyer cannot trade until one arrives, whatever the last price says.
• The book changes quickly. What you see is the state at one moment. Orders arrive, fill and are cancelled throughout the session.
• Outside trading hours the book is not live. Orders are valid only for the day's session, so a view taken in the evening shows the end of the last session, not demand for tomorrow.

Seeing the order book on Finmind

With a free Finmind account, the market-wide order book lists every UZSE security that has resting buyers or sellers, with the best bid and ask and the total quantity on each side, paged 5, 10, 20 or 50 at a time and marked as live or closed depending on the session. Each share also has a public page on the stocks page, such as HMKB, with its latest stored trade and daily closes, which helps you compare the book with recent prices.

This article is for education only and is not investment advice. Investing in securities involves risk, including the loss of money you invest.