A stock symbol is also known as a stock ticker, stock market symbol, or trading symbol. It is an arrangement of characters—usually letters—used to uniquely identify publicly-traded securities on an exchange. When a company issues shares, it selects a publicly-available symbol to represent the shares and investors and traders use the symbol to place orders to buy or sell those shares. The most common exchange on which securities are traded is the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and stocks traded on it all have a four letter symbol.

For example, the symbol AAPL is used to represent the publicly-traded shares of Apple Inc. The same symbol is used across exchanges, so investors from around the world can all use the same symbol to buy and sell Apple shares. Similarly, the symbol GOOG represents the publicly-traded shares of Google Inc. Stock symbols enable investors and traders to quickly identify and place orders for securities they want to trade.

Sometimes, additional letters or digits are added to stock symbols to denote additional characteristics such as share class or trading restrictions. For example, GOOG might become GOOGL for the Class A shares of Google, and GOOGLF for the restricted Class F shares. Other commonly used symbols include a letter to denote the security type, such as ETF for an exchange-traded fund, or REIT for a real estate investment trust.

In conclusion, stock symbols are an important tool used by investors and traders when buying and selling securities. They provide a shorthand way of identifying individual stocks, and the additional letters can provide important information about the security’s characteristics. Understanding stock symbols is important for every investor and trader.