What does Ticker of a Stock mean?

Why investors are using Ticker?

A ticker (stock symbol) is a code used to uniquely identify the shares of a particular publicly-traded company.

A ticker can consist of letters, numbers, or a combination of both.

The name ticker derives from the ticker tape, a paper tape on which the abbreviated names of the companies, the quotation price, and the volumes traded were printed by means of special equipment connected to the telegraph lines.

These “printers” were used until the end of the 60s when the first televisions and later computers made them obsolete.

Ticker and other identifying symbols

Although stock tickers identify a security, they are dependent on the currency they are traded in and are generally limited to stocks; in addition, even if rarely, the ticker name may change.

These limitations have led to the development of other codes in the financial markets to identify securities.

The most widespread of these is the International Securities Identification Number (ISIN).

An ISIN uniquely identifies a security and its structure is defined in the ISO 6166 standard.

The securities for which ISINs are issued not only concern shares but also include other financial instruments such as bonds, securities, and warrants.

The ISIN identifies the security, not the exchange on which it is traded; therefore it does not replace the ticker symbol.

The disadvantage of the ISIN code (and the reason why it is less known than the ticker) lies in the fact that it is impossible, without the appropriate tools, to trace the company to which it belongs.

For example, the ISIN code US38259P7069 is associated with Google, while the ticker is GOOG which is certainly easier to memorize.

Ticker Conventions

Each country and each individual stock exchange has its own convention in the use of tickers; for example in the United States in the NASDAQ list the shares of a company are made up of 4 letters (MSFT for Microsoft or NFLX for Netflix) while on the New York Stock Exchange the historical companies are identified by one or two letters (GM to indicate General Motors or V for Visa).

In the United States, but not limited to, a suffix is ​​used to indicate a particularity of the shares; when you want to distinguish between a preferential share and an ordinary share, the suffix “O” is used (MSFT.O Microsoft shares that do not give the right to vote at the meeting).

Given that the number of companies listed in the various stock lists is very high, to avoid conflicts between names it is also common to specify a prefix that indicates the reference list of the stock (NASDAQ: MSFT to indicate that Microsoft is listed on NASDAQ or BIT: ISP to indicate that Intesa San Paolo is instead listed on the Italian Stock Exchange).

More definitions of ticker

Today, the term ticker also refers to those telematic tools that show price trends in real-time or the history of book changes. For example, within the Ava Metatrader 5 platform from the “Ticks” tab, you can see the succession of so-called ticks (the history of the latest Bid and Ask prices).

The ticker monitor is another way of identifying the “electronic panels” that contain the real-time market situation in a synoptic framework. Also within the Ava Metatrader 5 platform, this tool is called “Market Watch” or “Market Watch”.

Avatrade is a broker on Forex and CFDs offers a wide range of financial instruments with their own ticker, they are all derivatives of instruments regulated by CFD, except for forex and cryptocurrencies.

To get the details of all the traded instruments and to know their characteristics, you can visit the trading conditions page

Below is an example of the main conditions of some shares listed on the AvaTrade platforms.

This page shows the name of the AMAZON instrument, and the main conditions such as the leverage, the margin, and the spread that is added by AvaTrade to the spread of the market where the financial instrument is listed. For example, by clicking on the name of the AMAZON share, a pop-up opens with all the details of the instrument with the real-time update, market bid, and ask with AvaTrade spread and also an interactive chart that can be customized with the type of chart and the time frames.

At the end of every single sheet of the financial product, there are also interesting ideas from AvaTrade’s analysts to better understand the instrument and the reference sector.

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