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I am aware of the basic idea of the 'offer price qty'. It's basically the number of shares available for you to buy at some instance. But what happens when this quantity drops to zero (i.e. there are no shares left to buy)? What does the company do in this case?

'Offer Price qty' is at the bottom right of this image:

Alok Industries Ltd. stock quote

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  • If this was a quote when the market was closed, it may be unreliable. Check the quote during regular trading hours.
    – Bob Baerker
    Jun 26, 2020 at 11:47
  • If there are no offers then obviously nobody can buy it.
    – user253751
    Jun 26, 2020 at 12:42

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It looks like the share price has hit the "Upper Circuit Limit", so trading is suspended for the day (or, possibly, there can be no sellers, only buyers).

The BSE page for Alok is currently (14:21 GMT, 26th June 2020) showing 18 notifications, the latest of which is "Touched Upper Circuit Rs. 48.20:

enter image description here

A circuit limit (upper or lower) is a limit beyond which a share's price is not allowed to move in a day, usually expressed as a percentage of the opening price. The limits are in place to stop large, volatile swings in a share's price.

Both Circuit Breaker on Investopedia and What is circuit breaker in stock market? from the Economic Times (of India) say that trading is suspended when a share's price hits either the upper or lower limit. If so, one might expect the Bid Price to be zero as well. However, Upper Circuit and Lower Circuit on the GetPaidIndia website says:

When a stock hits an upper circuit, there will be only buyers and no sellers.

So, if someone wants to sell the stock, they can do so.

Similarly, when a stock hits a lower circuit, there will be only sellers and no buyers.

So, if someone wants to buy the stock, they can do so at the lower circuit.

If this last description is correct, then since the stock has hit the upper limit, there could be no buyers and so there is no offer price (shown as zero with zero quantity). However, if you're still allowed to sell, someone has to buy, so I'm not sure how applicable this is. (Perhaps selling to a marker-maker doesn't count?)

Either way, trading (or perhaps only buying) in Alok is suspended for the day (although the BSE would be closed now, anyway).

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    It sounds like it means orders that would take the price beyond the circuit limit are removed from the books. But when the price hits the upper circuit limit, buy orders below the limit remain on the books and any stock holder can do a market sell order and sell at that level. In other words, there's a bid price (possibly below the real FMV) and you can sell at that price, but there's no ask price.
    – Daniel
    Jun 29, 2020 at 11:25

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