First off, avoid short selling. Beginners shouldn't be delving into this. Just stick to the buy.
Those two prices signify the Bid:Ask prices, or in layman's terms, Sell:Buy prices.
If you buy stock, you would buy it at the Ask price, and consequently, immediately have a loss of the difference between the Bid:Ask prices (there's a way to profit from huge ranges, however, I don't recommend stocks with huge ranges for beginners).
When you sell, you sell your shares at the Bid price, not the Ask price. You must wait for the Bid price to increase (Ask price subsequently increases as well) past the price you bought in, in order to make a profit.
Remember: Factor in your brokerage's commissions fees. Brokerages almost always charge the fee twice; one for buying, and one for selling, so be careful (check their fine print).
The difference is the spread ,which is often overlooked by novice investors. It means that if you buy 1000 shares at 679p (￡6790 ) ,add stamp duty @ 0.05% ,making ￡6823.95 plus dealing costs (￡12? ), bringing your book cost to ￡6835.95 or 683.595p per share. When you add dealing costs to sell , you will find your break even ( no profit;no loss ) net return of ￡6847.95 ( bid price of 684.795p ). This equates to a rise in price of almost 2% to go nowhere at all.
Thank you that helped explain things very well to me.
What I mean is for example if you look at ryan air stock there is a price on the left of short 6.75 and on the right of short 6.79
I am new to all this so I'm confused on which one is the stock price and what is the other for.
Thanks.
