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ERROR: type should be string, got "https://www.barrons.com/articles/whats-in-a-ticker-symbol-more-than-you-might-think-51562377126\nWhat’s in a Ticker Symbol? More Than You Might Think.\nAl Root\nUpdated July 6, 2019 10:41 am ET / Original July 5, 2019 9:38 pm ET\nPhotograph by Spencer Platt/Getty Images\nWhat’s in a name? At Barron’s, we prefer to ask what’s in a ticker, those one to four (occasionally five) letter identifiers for stocks? Occasionally, tickers are clever, even creative: the newly public Slack Technologies, with its WORK ticker, Harley-Davidson’s HOG, Molson Coors Brewing’s TAP, and YUM Brands’ ineffable—of course—YUM.\nWe wondered if what we define as “cool” tickers matters to stock performance. We were influenced by recent initial public offerings. Take Slack, the cloud-based, work-productivity company. After its listing, WORK’s market cap exceeded $23 billion. Beyond Meat’s BYND ticker is, of course, “beyond” minus the vowels—that’s always cool—and its shares briefly cracked $200, up more than 700% from its $25 offering price. Levi Strauss —LEVI—maker of cool clothes to fit its cool ticker, has returned almost 25% since returning to public markets in March.\nCompare those tickers to more mature companies that gobbled up prime alphabetical real estate decades ago. United States Steel, with its X, has been around since 1901; AT&T (T) and Kellogg (K) have sported single letters for nearly that long; and General Electric has two, G and E.\nHere’s what we found in our admittedly nonscientific study. Our cool ticker category rose an average of 17.5% annually over the last five years, versus 3.7% for single-letter tickers. Older companies often grow more slowly and tend to be held by value investors who favor earnings stability. Value investing has lagged growth for a decade. But when value reemerges—as it will—companies can ponder a handful of single-letter tickers: J, Q, or U.\nOK, we know correlation isn’t causation. But consider that not so long ago, companies got a major boost by adding “.com” to their name. Look how that turned out.\nStocks Make Like a Sparkler\nIn a holiday-shortened week, stocks hit new highs on trade cease fire and expectations of a Fed cut. In June, the economy added 224,000 jobs, with unemployment ticking up to 3.7%. For the week, the Dow industrials rose 1.2% to 26,922.12; the S&P 500 surged 1.6% to 2990.41; and the Nasdaq Composite raced ahead 1.9% to 8161.79.\nTrade Reprieve\nPresident Trump and President Xi Jinping of China met at the Group of 20 meeting in Japan, and agreed to a cease-fire in a trade war. The U.S. said it would delay raising tariffs on $300 billion in Chinese goods and allow Chinese telecom Huawei to buy U.S. tech components. China said it would buy U.S. farm products.\nA Visit to the DMZ\nNorth Korean strongman Kim Jong Un responded to a Trump tweet from the G20 and invited the president to meet him at the demilitarized zone. While there, Trump stepped across the border into North Korea, the first president to do so. Trump declared nuclear talks back on, and the administration reportedly has been discussing a freeze, rather than an elimination, of North Korean nuclear assets.\nPolitics and Central Banking\nChristine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was nominated to replace Mario Draghi to head the European Central Bank. Lagarde, a long-time French politician, is expected to continue Draghi’s dovish policies. Separately, the White House nominated two economists expected to press for easier money: Christopher Waller, director of research of the St. Louis Fed, and Judy Shelton, U.S. executive director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and an advocate of the gold standard.\nIran Breaks Out\nIran said talks in Vienna with the remaining signatories of the nuclear accord—the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China—failed to meet its expectations, and on Monday announced that the country had breached nuclear enrichment limits.\nOPEC Extends Cuts\nAlso in Vienna, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting nations and allies including Russia agreed to extend oil production reductions through next March. Discussions about future cooperation almost broke down, in part over a weekend agreement reached by Saudi Arabia and Russia on production levels.\nMigrants and Citizens\nA Department of Homeland inspector general’s report condemned conditions in detention centers packed with migrants seeking asylum. The report confirmed charges of poor food, overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions. Meanwhile, the Commerce Department was proceeding without a citizenship question in the 2020 Census until Trump unexpectedly tweeted his opposition. The Justice Department then asked a judge for more time to come up with a new rationale.\nBreaking Glass in Hong Kong\nHong Kong protesters battered down a glass wall and rampaged through the legislature on the anniversary of the handover of the former British colony to China in 1997. They retreated as police retook the building. The action occurred during otherwise peaceful demonstrations.\n--Robert Teitelman and Dan Lam\nEmail: editors@barrons.com"