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Liquidity taker

The side of a trade that removes resting size from the book by crossing the spread, paying for immediacy in both spread and fees.

Every trade has a maker and a taker. The taker chose the moment, so the taker pays: half the bid-ask-spread relative to the midpoint, plus a take fee on most maker-taker venues.

Taking is not a mistake. If your edge depends on being in the position now, paying a cent to be certain beats resting for an hour and missing the move. The error is taking out of impatience when the trade had no urgency.

Example: a 2,000-share buy on a 19.98 / 20.02 market costs 2 cents against the mid, or $40, plus roughly $0.0030 per share in take fees, about $6. Resting at 19.98 instead would have earned perhaps $0.0020 per share in rebate, a $92 swing per round trip — real money for an intraday strategy, noise for a six-month hold.

Related: resting-order, maker-taker, bid-ask-spread, effective-spread

See it drawn

Original diagrams for the ideas on this page. Illustrative, not real market data.

Bid-ask spread in an order bookSell orders stacked above buy orders with a gap between the best of each.SELLERS (asks)50.0690050.051,40050.0460050.011,10050.002,30049.99800spread = 0.03BUYERS (bids)
The bid-ask spread. Buy orders sit below, sell orders above, and the gap between the best bid (50.01) and best ask (50.04) is the spread you pay to cross. Bar length shows the size resting at each price.

Educational only, not advice. Spotted an error? Post in Site Feedback.