A Reuters instrument code, or RIC, is a ticker-like code used by

Refinitiv Refinitiv is an American-British global provider of financial market data and infrastructure. The company was founded in 2018. It is a subsidiary of London Stock Exchange Group after a US$27 billion sale from previous owners Blackstone Group LP ...

to identify

financial instruments Financial instruments are monetary contracts between parties. They can be created, traded, modified and settled. They can be cash (currency), evidence of an ownership interest in an entity or a contractual right to receive or deliver in the form ...

and indices. The codes are used for looking up information on various Refinitiv financial information networks (such as Refinitiv Real Time) and appear to have developed from the Quotron service purchased in the 1980s.

Description

The Reuters instrument code (RIC) was originally defined by Herbie Skeete, the Reuters Executive who wrote the original product specifications for the first products on Reuters' Integrated Data Network (IDN). RICs as originally defined by Skeete were meant to be logical and intuitive. For equities the codes were composed of a RIC Root (one to four characters – A through Z), followed by a period sign, then a one- or two-character (A through Z) code denoting the exchange on which the instrument is traded. Each company was meant to have a unique RIC root. Thus the RIC Root for International Business Machines would be IBM irrespective of the exchange on which International Business Machines was traded. Glen Renfrew, the CEO at that time, was persuaded to veto the idea of unique RIC Roots. Also vetoed was Skeete’s intention of making RICs freely available and becoming an ISO standard. Much of Skeete’s original work is still contained within today’s RIC structure, but some key elements have changed over the years. RICs were originally proprietary but following an EU investigation, their use was opened up. Please see the Antitrust section below for more information. The RIC is made up primarily of the security's

ticker symbol A ticker symbol or stock symbol is an abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. In short, ticker symbols are arrangements of symbols or characters (generally Latin letters ...

, optionally followed by a period and exchange code based on the name of the stock exchange using that ticker. For instance, IBM.N is a valid RIC, referring to IBM being traded on the

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...

. IBM.L refers to the same stock trading on the

London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St P ...

. The exchange code used in the RIC is proprietary to Reuters. Exchange codes have an ISO standard, ISO 10383, which is not used by the Reuters Instrument Code, but is in common use elsewhere. Ticker symbols are often reused on different exchanges, so in many cases the same ticker symbol references different securities. RIC codes use "artificial" tickers for common indexes and money market instruments. For instance, the US 10-year money market bond is assigned the ticker US10YT, the "T" at the end referring to "Treasury". Commodities are similarly assigned tickers, for instance crude oil is CL. Indexes have a leading period, for instance .DJI is the

Dow Jones Industrial Average The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), Dow Jones, or simply the Dow (), is a stock market index of 30 prominent companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. The DJIA is one of the oldest and most commonly followed equity inde ...

. Confusingly the "dot notation" is also used for a number of other purposes. Units are signified with a ".UN", and a particular exchange like NASDAQ by ".OQ". This confusion seems to be the result of Reuters attempting to merge the standards used by the wide variety of services they purchased in the 1980s and 90s. Other examples: *WMT.N means shares of

Wal-Mart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

traded at the

(N) Examples of indices: *.DJI Dow Jones Industrial Average *.IXIC NASDAQ Composite Index *.SPX

S&P 500 The Standard and Poor's 500, or simply the S&P 500, is a stock market index tracking the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. It is one of the most commonly followed equity indices. As of ...

*.GSPENTE is the abbreviation for the S&P (GSP) entertainment (ENTE) index. Examples of commodity futures: *CL crude, light oil *GC gold *HU unleaded gasoline *HO heating oil

Antitrust issues

In November 2009, The European Commission opened formal antitrust proceedings against Thomson Reuters to investigate whether Thomson Reuters could be abusing its dominant position in the market for consolidated real-time datafeeds through its RIC licensing practices, in breach of EU antitrust rules. In December 2012, the European Commission accepted Thomson Reuters proposal to remedy those concerns. The EC’s announcement brought the matter to a close, with no finding of liability. In summary, the proposal involves Thomson Reuters agreeing to offer its customers specific licence rights to continue to use its RICs in applications with data from an alternative real time consolidated data feed provider to which they have moved.

References

{{Thomson Reuters Instrument Code Security identifier types Financial metadata

Description

Antitrust issues

See also

References