What Is a Stock Ticker?
What stock tickers are and how to read the symbols you see in financial news.
INVESTING MADE EASY
Ann Roy
5/4/20262 min read
Introduction
AAPL, TSLA, AMZN. If you have ever watched financial news, you have seen these letters scrolling across the bottom of the screen. They are stock tickers, and they are the shorthand language of the stock market.
What Is a Ticker Symbol?
A ticker symbol is a unique combination of letters used to identify a publicly traded company on a stock exchange. For example, AAPL is Apple, MSFT is Microsoft, and KO is Coca-Cola. Tickers make it quick and easy to look up and trade stocks.
Where Tickers Come From
The name comes from the ticker tape machines of the late 1800s, which printed stock prices on long strips of paper. Today, companies choose their tickers when they go public, as long as the letters are available. Some companies pick fun tickers, like Harley-Davidson's HOG or Southwest Airlines' LUV.
Reading a Stock Quote
When you look up a ticker, you will see the current price, the change from the previous day in dollars and percent, and often other information like trading volume and market cap. Green usually means the price is up, and red means it is down. Different exchanges and countries have their own ticker formats.
Conclusion
Ticker symbols are the alphabet of the stock market. Once you learn to read them, financial news becomes much easier to follow!