Closing Tick

In the fallout of the nuclear holocaust destined to take place in the (hopefully) distant future, when rampant radiation spawns a breed of super-intelligent pack-hunting ticks, the opening tick will make the initial bite, marking a potential victim, followed by a swarm attack from a barrage of drone ticks, with the final coup de gras coming from the venomous, monster-sized closing tick, who will leave the prey helpless to the ravenous blood lust of the indomitable Tick Queen.

But that's all in the future. For now, the closing tick refers to a Wall Street statistic that measures the number of stocks that closed on an uptick compared to the number that finished the day's trading on a downtick.

Think of it like horses coming to the end of a race. Did the horse accelerate across the finish line? Or did it slow down?

If a stock ended the day on an uptick, meaning the final trade for the stock was at a higher price than the previous trade, that's the equivalent of a horse's acceleration. The downtick horses are the ones giving up a little just before the end.

The closing tick provides a look at momentum headed into the end of the day. It's presented as a whole number, positive meaning more stocks finished on an uptick than finished on a downtick. A negative number means more stocks finished on a downtick.