Uniform Symbology (also known as UMTF), in the context of European

financial markets A financial market is a market in which people trade financial securities and derivatives at low transaction costs. Some of the securities include stocks and bonds, raw materials and precious metals, which are known in the financial markets ...

, refers to a common scheme to refer to

securities A security is a tradable financial asset. The term commonly refers to any form of financial instrument, but its legal definition varies by jurisdiction. In some countries and languages people commonly use the term "security" to refer to any fo ...

("symbols"), adopted by European markets in 2008. The original announcement reads as follows:

In order to facilitate orderly and efficient trading of securities across multiple markets, the founders of the Committee on Uniform Symbology (BATS Europe,
Chi-X Europe BATS Chi-X Europe is a London-based, order-driven pan-European equity exchange that has been a subsidiary of BATS Global Markets since 2011. It is a low latency, low cost alternative to exchange traded equities and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) ...
and NASDAQ OMX Europe) agreed to create and adopt a common securities symbology to uniformly identify securities traded across Europe. A committee was formed for the purpose of which was to create, maintain and modify as necessary the uniform methodology for securities symbology (Uniform Symbology) to be applied to the securities and to develop and use the Uniform Symbology in furtherance of the committee’s aims and objectives. Since the founding of the Committee on Uniform Symbology other members have joined including: Turquoise, NYSE Euronext and QUOTE MTF.

(See links to some of the market's press releases in the External links section below.)

Symbology Algorithm

The Uniform Symbology Algorithm is designed to be

human readable A human-readable medium or human-readable format is any encoding of data or information that can be naturally read by humans. In computing, ''human-readable'' data is often encoded as ASCII or Unicode text, rather than as binary data. In most ...

, fit into 6 characters, have no symbol clashes and where possible, be derivable from another, freely available code. It will consist of a stock code followed by a single, lower case letter designating the primary listing exchange. The stock code will be derived from the “local code” published by the primary exchange. These will be truncated where necessary. If the local code contains a single letter class designator of A through Z (e.g. “STE A”) then the single letter class designator shall be retained and the code will be truncated to a maximum of 4 characters, plus the single letter class (A through Z) designator. For some Nordic stocks the share designator will be prefixed with “SDB” (e.g. “SDBA”). In this case the “SDB” should be removed and the single letter class (A through Z) designator will be retained. Any codes containing spaces, periods, underscores or second words (other than the single letter class (A through Z) described above) will be truncated at the space, period, etc. All remaining non-alphanumeric characters should be removed.

Stock Code Truncation Examples

Market codes by market centre (including examples)

Note that in some cases a market code suffix is shared by multiple listing markets. For example, the letter "y" is used for stocks listed on the Athens, Cyprus and Malta exchanges.

References

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Turquoise Technical specifications, version 1.1 (May 2009)