A ticker symbol, also known as a stock symbol, is a unique series of letters assigned to a security for trading purposes. It is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. Ticker symbols are arrangements of symbols or characters representing specific assets or securities listed on a stock exchange or traded publicly. They are typically made up of one to five letters and are used to identify a specific stock or bond on a stock exchange or financial platform.

The symbols were kept as short as possible to reduce the number of characters that had to be printed on the ticker tape, and to make it easy to recognize by traders and investors. While usually a stock ticker identifies a security that can be traded, stock market indices are also sometimes assigned a symbol, even though they can generally not be traded. Ticker symbols are used on stock exchanges because they are easy abbreviations that are useful to investors and analysts to help them identify stocks and obtain all relevant information such as stock split, dividend data, earnings reports, etc. .

Some ways to use a ticker symbol include identifying a specific security, tracking stock prices, placing a trade, and researching a company. Ticker symbols are unique identifiers assigned to each security traded on a particular market. Shares of the same company can be traded on several exchanges, but they will have different stock ticker symbols for each different exchange the stock is traded on.