[convery]

Because there's a lot of longer ones and it becomes a habit. For example I often talk about ATVI (Activision-Blizzard) in chats as it's a lot shorter.

[johnchristopher]

"in chats". This is a blog post, a forum, not an SMS conversation with 1998's prices. Acronyms look-up on Google gets old really fast. I had to look for YANBU yesterday and it was not fun to get back to the orignal text after that.

[DougN7]

I would never have guessed what ATVI was. So audience is important, which means for a public post, stock symbols probably aren't a great idea.

[koko775]

It's the first result not only on Google but DuckDuckGo as well. Do you not search for unfamiliar terms?

[DougN7]

Sure I do. But if one has an aim to be understood, it's better not to make everyone lookup what you're referring to. If something has a well known name, use the name!