The
abbreviation used to identify a
company on a
stock exchange. In the
United States, they are between 1 and 5 letters long, depending on the stock exchange, whether there are
suffixes, and how cool the company is.
NYSE symbols are 1-3 letters,
NASDAQ ones are 4 or 5.
Nobody cares about AMEX anymore, since they merged with (read: got eaten up by) the NASDAQ. Not that anybody cared prior to the merger.