Ticker symbol no longer tells if a stock trades on NYSE

— -- A: For years, you could tell instantly if a company's stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq by just looking at its stock symbol: Three-letter symbols were NYSE stocks and four were Nasdaq.

That's no longer the case. In February 2007, Nasdaq received approval to handle stock symbols of four letters or fewer. And in July 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission allowed NYSE-listed companies to keep their ticker symbols if they moved to the Nasdaq.

And that's what News Corp. did last December, when it moved its multiple classes of stock from the NYSE to the Nasdaq but kept its ticker symbols.

You can read more here about the Nasdaq's ability to take symbols of fewer than four letters.

Matt Krantz is a financial markets reporter at USA TODAY and author of Investing Online for Dummies. He answers a different reader question every weekday in his Ask Matt column at money.usatoday.com. To submit a question, e-mail Matt at mkrantz@usatoday.com. Click here to see previous Ask Matt columns.