Let’s talk stock symbols for a sec. On the NASDAQ, most stock symbols are four letters long. Microsoft is MSFT, Netflix is NFLX, and eBay is—and this’ll blow some minds—EBAY. But every once in a while, we’ll see a NASDAQ symbol with an extra letter attached to the end of it. We call that letter a fifth-letter identifier.
So what does it mean when our fave NASDAQ symbol suddenly shows up sporting a fifth-letter identifier? Well, it means there’s something going on with that company that might impact how its stock is performing. For example, if a company’s code has a Q at the end of it, the company is in bankruptcy. If it has a V after it, the stock is expected to split. Who knew one little letter could tell us so much?
There are currently 26 fifth-letter identifiers—one for every letter of the alphabet, get it?—and if we see a fifth-letter identifier tagging along with a stock we’re interested in, it’s definitely worth finding out what the code means and why it’s there.
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Finance: What is a CUSIP Number?119 Views
Finance, a la shmoop. What is a CUSIP number? Close that's a Cusack number
867-53-09, yeah we know there. So yeah you know when you go to the grocery
store and the cashier swipes your apples eight times across that little bar code [Apple being scanned]
reader thingy and it doesn't work again and again and again and then she finally [Error coming up on the screen]
pulls back the plastic from where the Apple was tagged hunts for her glasses [Cashier putting on her glasses]
and then visually finds the number associated with that Apple and then just
manually types it in. Well that's the fruit equivalent of a CUSIP number [Guy talking in a supermarket]
A CUSIP number is well just that only applied to securities, stocks, bonds even
muni bonds. CUSIP stands for committee on uniforms security identification [The meaning of each letter is shown]
procedures, and is basically just the serial number system of securities, but [CUSIP definition written on a 100 dollar bill]
has nine digits, the first six represent the original issuer of the security like
coca-cola shares when it went public a gazillion years ago. Then the next two [The fix 6 digits are highlighted]
characters refer to that type of security at hand like is it a basic
equity bond, muni bond and the ninth digit is riboflavin yeah it's just there
to be sure the other digits are all accurate and assures that there's no [The 3 digits meaning are shown]
replication in any of the other CUSIP index number sets. So yeah CUSIP numbers
make the securities easier to track because it's awfully hard to get a
microchip into one of them. [Microchip pulled out of a bond certificate]
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