Introduction to Trading
A ticker is a type of stock symbol that describes information about the stock of a company. Tickers take the form of shapes, characters, numbers and colours, and are indicative of any kind of change that a security on the financial market shows.
Understanding Tickers
Tickers are a condensed report of the changes in price, trade volume and other information of the stocks being traded on the market. Before trading became electronic, paper ticker tapes were used as shorthand for dictating company information to investors. They became a convenient form of information flow, a technique that has become electronic in the modern day. Now, a ticker is a combination of letters and numbers along with percentages and changes that roll on a screen that depict the current market conditions.
Tickers have helped in improving the efficacy of stock trading and stock recognition when two companies have similar monikers. This has given rise to having standardised suffixing in cases where a company has more than one class of shares listed and being traded. Tickers thus provide the trading status for stocks on companies on stock exchanges.
Highlights of Tickers
Ticker tapes date back to 1867 when numbers and characters and symbols became symbolic of company information and changes.
Companies that have similar monikers in their names such as a fictional CA and another fictional C, ticker stock symbols help in differentiating them by the combination of their names on the ticker.
Tickers get their name from ‘tick’ which denotes a ‘change’ in the stock, be it its price, trading volume or net price or percentage. They help investors understand the current market scenario at any given time of the day.
Modern day tickers are updated in real-time, unlike old times when there was considerable delay in the transactions and reporting of it.
Tickers also contain colour-coded symbols in them to show the movement of the stock. They depict the highs and lows of a stock’s price and performance over a time period. Sometimes this stock symbol is absent too.
Current day online platforms allow customisation of ticker symbols to suit your preference for better understanding of the net prices of the stock on the ticker.
