Hi, My name is Jon and I'm an independent investor from Kansas City. And I am here to talk to you today about what is a ticker symbol, on About.com.A ticker symbol is an abbreviation or arrangement of letters that are used to represent a particular stock or company. For example if you are looking for Apple, you would find the stock listed with the ticker symbol APPL.Ticker symbols are used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares on the NASDAQ or New York Stock Exchange.  Stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange have ticker symbols up to three letters, and those traded on the NASDAQ have four letter ticker symbols.An example would be Google which has a ticker symbol of GOOG which is four letters and therefore listed on the NASDAQ. Just like Apple and Google, many of the stocks ticker symbols closely reflect the name of the company. Thanks for watching and for more information on stocks and investing check us out on the web at money.about.com