ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Total position spread

Okay kiddo, let's talk about something called "total position spread." This is a big and important concept that people who trade in the stock market need to know about.

Imagine you have a cookie and you want to cut it into smaller pieces to share with your friends. You might cut it in half, then in half again, and keep cutting until you have little pieces that everyone can have. Each time you make a cut, you're separating the cookie into smaller parts.

Now, when investors buy and sell stocks, they're not dealing with cookies, but with something called a "position" which is how much money they have invested in a specific stock. The total position spread is the difference between the highest price someone is willing to pay to buy the stock and the lowest price someone is willing to sell it for.

Think of it like this: there are people who want to buy a stock because they think it will go up in value, and there are people who want to sell the stock because they think it will go down. The total position spread is the range of prices between what the buyers are willing to pay and what the sellers are willing to sell for.

For example, let's say that the highest price someone is willing to pay for a stock is $10, but the lowest price someone is willing to sell it for is $8. The total position spread in this case is $2 ($10 - $8). If the spread is small, it means there are a lot of people who agree on the value of the stock, but if the spread is large, it means there is more disagreement about the value.

So, total position spread is a way that investors can understand how much demand there is for a stock and how much people are willing to pay for it. It's an important concept to understand when making decisions about buying and selling stocks.