Stock Symbol (Tickers)

Categories: Stocks

See: Ticker Symbol.

GE. DIS. KO. GOOG. AMZN. RDS.A, RDS.B. KHZ. NKE. PG. JNJ. PEP. Know any of ‘em? They’re all stock symbols. A few letters that represent hundreds of billions of dollars in market value.

Why do we even have symbols? Well, in the olden days, stock prices were delivered on paper—printed with a letter printing “hammer” like an old-timey manual typewriter. It took forever to get the prices out, especially on busy days. So rather than write out “International Business Machines” for IBM, it was, well...way less hammering for 3 letters than tons. Hence the advent of the symbols.

It’d be cooler if you could smash them together at band practice, though.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is Ticker Tape?2 Views

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Finance allah shmoop what is ticker tape It's this tick

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tick tick you know without the explosion at the end

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Okay wavy line time travel dissolve thing Go ahead Back

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to nineteen twenty seven Stock information like stock prices used

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to be passed along via telegraph machine This thing little

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magnets were engaged electronically and the stock prices were printed

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on thin paper tape known as ticker tape Yes clever

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name However typically only the last numbers would be printed

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Like if you had ibm training in one hundred seventy

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three dollars Four cents All you would see is that

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three Fifty for there on the end Well why would

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this happen Well because under this technology the ink and

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paper cost off fortune and because there was so much

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information to convey well had they spelled out the entire

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name of the company rather than the ticker symbol alone

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And yes that's how the symbols all came to be

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While then that printing would have taken forever just to

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send over say an hour's worth of trades And by

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the time the prince got done while the trades would

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be irrelevant So recycling with all this take laying around

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was kind of a thing back then As well And

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old ticker tape was used for two things Parades and

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well for leper con toilet paper But we don't talk

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much about that anyway but more for parade People used

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to throw the stuff out of building windows As you

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know floats in astronauts and presidents went by Well by

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the nineteen sixties the traditional ticker tape parade was no

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longer needed There were better and faster ways Teo you

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know throw paper and to transmit stock price info Well

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today everything's done electronically Thank you The internet No more

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dead trees Thank you very much So ticker tape refers

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to the stream of stock prices and information that come

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through a usually on a mobile device or screen of

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some sort today Anyway that's progress worthy of a parade

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)