The Basic Understanding of Tickertape

Even though back then it was not digital yet, and the digital age had not set in yet, it was still a marvellous and one of a kind invention which helped the company that Calahan worked for earn a lot of money. They used to lend these stock taper tapes made by their employees to proper undertakings, like brokerage houses and regional exchanges but they used to charge a fee for that. The name “ticker” came from the sound that this machine made while it was typing down the information on the paper.

How It Developed

Thomas Edison later made an easier to use ticker tape to replace Calahan’s ticker. Edison was a former telegraph operator. Even though Thomas Edison is mainly known as the founder of the light bulb but it is a lesser known fact that a stock ticker was his first proper invention, through the buying and selling of which he had earned enough to open up a laboratory of his own and then develop the light bulb and other very well known inventions.

Before the digital stock tickers took over, the very last non digital or mechanical stock ticker had debuted in 1960, before being ultimately replaced by computerized or Led ticker tape which had digital displays. These tapes started to be used everywhere to keep everyone updated on the rise and fall in stocks. The change I technology also needed a change in skilled people because obviously the people who worked with the mechanical ticker were not well equipped to work with the digital one and thus the change in skill was very required.

How A Ticker Works

A stock ticker does the job of showing the rise and fall of the value of a stock. It streams quietly on the lower edge of the tv screen so that people who have to notice will notice it either way. A stock ticker shows a person the following things,

• The name of the stock, which is usually in short forms of four or five letters big enough for the investor to recognize his or her stocks.
• Shares that have been traded, the number of shares.
• Price at which the shares have been traded, now it is very important to remember that this number is not the number total value of the share but the value per share, so this is to be kept in mind for further calculations.
• Change in direction of the price, now this is indicated by three colours on the LED ticker display, the green tick or the uptick, the red tick or the down tick and the blur or white tick. The uptick basically means that the price of the share concerned has gone up and the red tick means that the price of the share concerned has gone down. Whereas the blue or white tick means that the price has remained unchanged
• And finally, the change amount, that is the amount by which the price has been changed.

Thus once one memorizes the above points well, it becomes very easy to read a stock ticker. It will make it easy to take immediate decision that will make investment secure and safe. It has helped investors in all ways to plan their investment.