U.S. furniture maker and retailer Ethan Allen Interiors wants you to know that its vision of American design is meant to evoke âClassic, Country & Coastal and Modern.â It does not do crypto.
To make this clear, the company announced Thursday it is changing its New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) ticker symbol from âETHâ to âETDâ to avoid confusion with the cryptocurrency ether.
The Danbury, Conn.-based companyâs stock soared earlier this year, which many analysts attributed to retail traders confusing its symbol with the identical abbreviation for ether, the native currency of the Ethereum network.
âWeâve definitely seen a massive increase on a percentage basis in mistaken activity on the Ethan Allen stream,â Rishi Khanna, CEO of Stocktwits, told the Wall Street Journal in May.
Clearly, the retailer had had enough. âThis change will better differentiate Ethan Allen news from Ethereum news in search results, as Ethereum is often abbreviated as ETH,â CEO Farooq Kathwari said in the press release.
Farooq said the âDâ in the new ticker symbol stands for âdesign.â
Ticker confusion is not unique to Ethan Allen. Similar confusion has been seen in the stock market as retail traders mistake unrelated companies for chat application Clubhouse or encrypted messaging application Signal. Researchers have been finding correlations between corporation name changes and internet-related âdotcomâ names for decades.
In fact, Ethan Allenâs management could have perhaps been forgiven for going the other direction and trying to increase its association with the cryptocurrency. After all, while the furniture retailerâs stock price climbed nearly 80% since last August, the price of ether soared about 580% during the same time period.
The change to âETDâ will take place on Aug. 16, ending 28 years of âETHâ for Ethan Allen since the companyâs initial public offering in 1993.Â