I never warmed up to the options symbology. Fortunately, with my broker, I never really had to – I had to dig into the charts to see the actual symbol that represented the ticker symbol, expiration month, call or put designation (A-L was for January-December calls, M-X was for January-December puts), and strike price.

Another brokerage I use still used them extensively, but the lookup was handled automatically.

Fortunately, mastering this old system is nothing I never need to worry about, as it’s being phased out. It was designed for old-school technology, back when computers had tiny memory and storage capacities, bandwidth was oftem over modems of baud rates of three or four digits, and most orders were handled via telephone.

Between that, and penny pricing (which has been more-or-less standard as long as I have been trading), I think the trading world is more user-friendly than ever.

Which I guess is important to the sharks swimming those waters that are always in need of fresh meat…