What's in a name? Or a ticker symbol?

Ticker tape bragging rights
One of the most weirdly interesting commodities on Wall Street are stock symbols. The 26 letters of the English alphabet yield millions of possible combinations. But how many make a really good ticker symbol?

It's oddly important. In most of Asia, for instance, company stock symbols are almost unrecognizable combinations of numbers and letters. Alibaba's ADRs trade under the ticker BABA on the New York Stock Exchange (that's a good ticker), but under 9988.HK in Hong Kong. Seems hard to attach any cachet to that. Here we use only letters, and that gives companies a chance to associate themselves with their tickers. The symbol becomes almost a brand, so what you need is something that is either visually arresting or instantly recognizable. A good stock symbol is something of a marketing tool. 

The rarest of course are the single-letter tickers: C for Citi, F for Ford, M for Macy's. Most recently, Qnity Electronics got the letter Q; I admit I had to look this company up to figure out who they were (a semiconductor-parts manufacturer spun out of the old DuPont, which had a really good ticker, DD). JPM is obviously pretty good since it's the founder's initials. Good luck to anybody who's got "black" in their name and wants BLK; BlackRock has that one sewn up, while former corporate sibling Blackstone has BX. Caterpillar has CAT, which has the double benefit of serving as a nickname for the company and being an actual word.

Which brings me to LendingClub. The company announced yesterday that it is rebranding, changing its name to Happen Bank, as our Allissa Kline reported. The argument is that the company has changed, and the old name didn't reflect the new business. Which is perfectly reasonable. But one issue that wasn't addressed: What are they going to do with their ticker symbol, LC?

LC is a good one as far as tickers go. Only two letters so it's easy to remember, and it's intuitive. L C, Lending Club. And it sounds like a real name; I mean, sometimes it is a real name. The issue wasn't addressed in anything the company said, so I emailed them and asked. LendingClub, I mean Happen Bank, told me they plan to change their ticker symbol but haven't decided on anything yet.

What might they pick? If I had to guess, I'd guess they would try for HB. It's available (I found a site called Stock Analysis that published a searchable list of every equity symbol but be warned, it's a bit of a rabbit hole) and visually it looks pretty good, right? But HB is so popular there is a Wikipedia page dedicated to organizations and things that have it in their name. There is the HB (hard black) pencil, a company named HB Construction in New Mexico, an Irish ice cream company called HB Ice Cream, Hanna-Barbera (Gen X'ers know what I'm talking about), UK private-equity firm Hamilton Bradshaw, and HB, a Finnish Christian symphonic metal musical group. You wouldn't want their fans mixed up with your fans and showing up at your annual shareholder meeting.

So HB is a bit of a crowded brand. Another complicating factor, maybe, is that there are also some close variations on HB on the exchanges. HBAN is the ticker for Huntington Bancshares. HBB is Hamilton Beach. Happen Bank could go with HAPP, or HPBK (they're available, according to the Stock Analysis website, and the NYSE does allow up to four letters in its tickers). But those wouldn't be as concise as HB.

LendingClub, I mean Happen Bank, said they plan to make a decision closer to the summer, when the whole name change goes through, and they'll announce the new ticker then. But if you're a company named something like Larry's Capacitors, you should consider going public. There's going to be a ticker symbol opening up that's just for you.