Ticker Symbol
A short code — like AAPL for Apple or TSLA for Tesla — that identifies a tradable asset, giving exchanges and data providers one unique handle for quotes, orders, and settlement.
A ticker is the short code that stands in for a security — AAPL for Apple, TSLA for Tesla. Company names are long and easy to confuse, so exchanges and market-data providers assign each listing a compact, unique handle and route quotes, orders, and settlement through that one code. The six-digit numbers Korean investors call a 'stock code' do exactly the same job.
The catch is that the same company can be written differently depending on which exchange and which data source you look at. LDBD follows Yahoo Finance's symbol conventions. US stocks are plain letters with no suffix, like AAPL or TSLA. Korean stocks take their six-digit number plus a suffix — .KS for KOSPI, .KQ for KOSDAQ — so Samsung Electronics becomes 005930.KS. Crypto is written as asset-and-quote-currency, like BTC-USD, which also encodes what it is priced in.
This looks like trivia, but it matters because a ticker is what decides which price series gets pulled. Drop the suffix or grab the wrong exchange code and you will be looking at a completely different security that merely shares a name. To check whether a call was right, you eventually have to line it up against the actual closing price for that exact symbol — which is why knowing the correct ticker is where verification starts.
How LDBD uses it
On LDBD the ticker is how you pick the asset you are calling. Stock and ETF prices come from yahoo-finance2 and crypto from CoinGecko, and each asset is identified by a Yahoo-style symbol — .KS/.KQ suffixes for Korean stocks like 005930.KS, and the BTC-USD form for crypto. When a prediction resolves, that symbol determines which dividend- and split-adjusted close (adj_close) scores it, so the right ticker is the precondition for the right score.
FAQ
Why do I have to write 005930.KS instead of just Samsung Electronics?
Under Yahoo-style conventions a Korean KOSPI listing is its six-digit code plus .KS, and KOSDAQ takes .KQ. Without the suffix the system cannot tell which exchange the listing belongs to, so it pulls the wrong data or fails to find it at all. LDBD uses the same convention, so Korean stocks have to carry the suffix exactly.
Can I verify a prediction myself if I know the ticker?
Yes. With the symbol plus the start and end dates, you can pull the actual closing prices for that window from free data like Yahoo Finance or CoinGecko and check whether the direction was right. Just note that LDBD scores on the adjusted close (adj_close), which folds in dividends and splits, so match against the adjusted close rather than the raw close and the numbers will line up.