Why does the financial web site Im using say some of the symbols listed in the newsletter are invalid?
When it comes to certain share types — such as preferred stocks, foreign shares, companies listed on the bulletin board, etc… — various financial web sites will often list these ticker symbols differently. For example, let’s consider the case of Capstead Mortgage Corporation’s preferred class B shares. Popular web site Yahoo! Finance lists this symbol as: CMO-PB Because this tends to be one of the most commonly-used sites by investors, we typically list the symbols offered by Yahoo Finance within our newsletters. However, when using other web sites, such as online broker E*Trade, you’ll need to enter in the symbol CMO.PR.B in order to get a price quote for this same security. If you visit E*Trade and try to enter in “CMO-PB”, you’ll get an error message that the symbol is not found. Because the symbols listed often differ from web site to web site, the best way to look up current prices is to use each web site’s “Symbol Lookup” feature to search for the appropriate symbol. When usi
