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Stock Symbol

Updated on March 14, 2023


Stock Symbol is an abbreviation for identifying a company’s shares listed on a stock exchange. It is unique to each company and can be a combination of different alphabets/characters. Stock Symbol is used to differentiate a stock from other securities or similar sounding names and is usually a shortened form of a company’s name. Stock Symbol is also referred to as a ‘Ticker Symbol’ or simply ‘Ticker’. (Ticker comes from the sound of the Ticker Tape machine which was used for stock price quotations earlier).

Stock Symbol Explained

Stock Symbol can be found by initiating a search on the stock exchange site or by logging into the Demat account and searching by the first few letters or name of the company. Stock Symbol is also used to represent the special type of issue, like Rights Issue (For example RIL-RE) and category of shares like DVR, with special voting rights. (For example TATAMTRDVR)