Glossary
Ticker symbol
The short code of letters that identifies a stock, ETF or other listed security on an exchange and in every quote and order.
On this page
A ticker symbol is the abbreviation used to identify a security in quotes, orders and news: AAPL for Apple, F for Ford, SPY for the SPDR S&P 500 ETF. It is the address you type to look up a price or place a trade. The name comes from the ticker-tape machines that printed trades on paper strips from the late 1800s onward.
How symbols are built
US listed stocks generally use one to four letters, and some ETFs and other products use up to five. Historically, NYSE companies had three letters or fewer and Nasdaq companies had four, but that split no longer holds, since companies can keep their symbol when switching exchanges. Single-letter tickers are rare and prized.
Suffixes and extra characters carry information:
- Share classes. Berkshire Hathaway's two classes are written BRK.A and BRK.B (some platforms use BRK-B or BRK/B).
- Mutual funds. Five letters ending in X, such as an index fund's VFIAX.
- International listings. Many data providers add an exchange suffix, such as .TO for Toronto or .L for London.
- Indexes. Often shown with a caret, such as ^GSPC for the S&P 500, because an index cannot be traded directly.
What to watch for
Symbols change after mergers, rebrandings and reverse splits, and a retired symbol can later be reissued to another company. A stock that moves to the over-the-counter market usually gets a new symbol. Meme-driven confusions are real: investors have bid up the wrong stock after misreading a popular ticker.