Teenie

What Is a Teenie?

A teenie, in trading, is a measure of value representing one-sixteenth of one basis point. A basis point is one-hundredths of a percent.

How a Teenie Works

A teenie was once the smallest amount by which a security's price could move and the smallest unit of a security that could be traded. In April 2001, the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered all U.S. stock markets to switch from using fractions in price quotes to the decimal system, a system called decimalization. Under this new system, a teenie is represented by .0625. 

With decimalization, a teenie is no longer the smallest amount by which a security's price can move or the smallest unit of a security that can be traded. The new minimum is .01 cents. Because of this change, some traders now mean 1 cent when they use the term "teenie." Some traders (i.e., scalpers) use teenies in their strategies, but with decimalization, such strategies can be more difficult to profit from because spreads are typically smaller than .0625 cents.

Historical Pricing and the Teenie

The practice of pricing in eighths stretches back hundreds of years, when Spanish traders used gold doubloons to facilitate trade, which could be divided into two, four, or even eight pieces, and were countable by hand. Spanish traders decided that one’s thumbs would not be included for counting, so Spanish gold doubloons had a base of eight. So when the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was established about 200 years later, it was based on this Spanish trading system: Trade began with this base-eight denomination, and 1/8 of a dollar, or 12.5 cents, became the spread, or the smallest amount a stock could change in value.

In 1997, U.S. markets moved from the prior practice of quoting prices in eighths of a dollar to quoting in sixteenths of a dollar. This event triggered the inevitable adoption of quoting in dollars and cents, which occurred in 2001.