The bid shows the highest price someone is willing to pay.
The ask shows the lowest price someone is willing to sell.
Right now it is .0137 (28k shares) x .0149 (72k shares).
If you wanted to buy 50K at.0149, they would execute and then it would show .0149 (22k shares).
If you put in 300k shares @ .03 here is what would happen,
right now there is 72k at .0149 and 330k at .0158.
You would buy the 72k at .0149.
This would leave your order 228k to execute.
Then the ask would move up to show .0158.
Your remaining 228k would execute @.0158 as there are 330k waiting to sell.
Your broker is obligated to get you the best price possible. Entering a buy order much higher will fill at the ask. Unless it is for a HUGE amount of shares and the sell orders entered are taken out at higher and higher prices.
Of course L2 only shows the orders entered at that second. It is constantly changing and only the best ones are shown.
NITE is showing 10k at .0149, NITE could also have a 3 million share sell order sitting at .015 but you won't see it until the best orders are executed and the ask moves to .015.
So when you see people say "only 20,000 shares to .02" or something like that, it probably isn't true because there are orders @.016, .017, .018, and .019 that are not shown.
Does this help?
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