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Disclaimer: I am very new to investing, so please forgive me if my question is too naive and ambiguous.

My problem that I don't understand how it is so complex to identify an individual stock.

I find things like:

  • ISIN (which looks like it is not enough)
  • FIGI (which looks like a nice idea but I don't know where to find this in my trader1)
  • Ticker Symbol (which is also not enough)
  • Exchange Symbol (which is confusing and also not clear in my trader1)

Real case scenario: if I want to find the stock of Tesla I see 3 different results:

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Two of them are have the same Ticker Symbol (but different Exchange symbol), the other one has another Ticker Symbol.

If I look for ISIN there is also ambiguity, these are results from DeGiro searching by the Facebook ISIN:

enter image description here

What can I do to resolve my confusion?

1 DeGiro

Update

For the Ticket Symbol un-accuracy I extract this from GoogleFinance API documentation:

It’s mandatory to use both the exchange symbol and ticker symbol for accurate results and to avoid discrepancies. For example, use “NASDAQ:GOOG” instead of “GOOG.”

Also is worth to consider that I am writing from Europe and I am noticing how much the documentation about all the stock market is US focused.

Update 2

I am reading these:

An I am still finding it confusing

fguillen
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2 Answers2

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In my experience, a ticker symbol is always sufficient to identify a stock, at least for domestic stocks. (I'm in the United States; I don't know what country you're in.) So you should be able to just use the ticker symbol.

You write that "if I try to use GoogleFinance it requires me the Exchange Symbol as well". That's not true for me; I can just type a ticker symbol into Google Finance and it always brings me straight to the stock I want. What ticker symbols are giving you problems?

Sophie Swett
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@fguillen thanks for your excellent question!

If you look at https://markets.ft.com/data/equities/tearsheet/summary?s=TSLA:VIE and use the drop-down, you'll see that Tesla is traded in a number of exchanges, eg: Tesla exchanges.

Within Germany alone, there are about 10 exchanges where Tesla is traded: Tesla exchanges in Germany.

Your ISIN lookup shows a similar situation: that Facebook common stock is traded on NASDAQ, Xetra, Frankfurt, and Swiss SIX exchange (in EUR and in USD): all under different tickers.

Vladimir Alexiev
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