I was checking up on OMI, an oil tanker company mentioned favorably in Barron's (subscription required) a few weeks ago. It has been on my watch list for quite a while. So I typed "OMI" into the quote search, only to get a leading distributor of medical and surgical supplies-- that's not right. Then I remember the company I was interested in goes by the ticker OMM-- now that's better.

It seems like symbol confusion happens to me about once a month. Harley Davidson (HDI) is changing its symbol to HOG (see Harley Davidson - HDI will be HOG - and living high!) This will add a little confusion for a while, but I bet there are millions of people that have looked up HDI, but who actually wanted Home Depot, ticker HD.

Another one I have remembered wrong in the past is Alcoa Aluminum which uses 'AA' for it's stock ticker symbol. This makes sense, but what comes to mind first is American Airlines, which uses 'AA' for their logo, website (AA.com), and in most promotional material, and is actually AMR. 'AA - American Airlines' is also used as a slang term for a pair of aces in the hole in hold-em poker. 'WM' is Washington Mutual, not Waste Management which is 'WMI', or Wal-Mart which is 'WMT'

I'm sure ticker confusion is a common enough occurrence and that most of the time investors find the correct stock ticker for the company in which they are interested. Still, with so many millions of trades daily and so many of them done on low cost on-line trading sites by people with limited experience, I wonder how often someone does not catch the mistake.

Anyone else have ticker confusion or trades that they wanted busted due to ticker error? It's always worth double-checking before confirming a trade.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for Design and Research of an Architecture & Planning firm.

Get your motors running! On Tuesday, August 15, Harley Davidson (HDI) will change its ticker symbol to "HOG." HOG is the acronym for the Harley Owners Group, but this was adopted long after the term was a nickname for the bikes world wide. No doubt the change in ticker symbol will serve as a form of brand extension, which Harley excels at better than most.

I can think of many companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Starbucks, Disney, FedEx, Porsche, McDonald's, Yahoo, eBay, Google, J&J, GE, and on and on that have strong brands that have been extended to every kind of merchandise and promotion imaginable. However, very few end up tattooed on someone's body. J&J, don't think so. Yahoo not yet. Google, maybe it's coming. For Harley Davidson it is common. The only thing I can think of that comes close is Snoopy and Micky Mouse, but they may be fading and HDI, I mean HOG, is still growing and strengthening its brand like few others. Could they be influenced by GOOG's symbol, whose brand is growing by leaps and bounds -- that might be a stretch.

So this week when the HOG's invade the market they will be riding high, and that includes their stock price, which is approaching an all-time high. Even more incredible, the company's fundamentals are looking good and do not appear to be topping out!

I have wondered out loud about Google many times, if you have been following my blog posts. In my 10 Reasons I think Google is going down number ten was the Sheldon equivalency test; what could you buy instead? This is a very important basis for valuation. You would do this when deciding between auto insurance policies, beers, or laundry detergent, so why not a stock purchase? It is all about the allocation of capital resources, price and value.

In my example at the time I used the combined value of Anheuser Busch (BUD) $35B + Federal Express (FDX) $34.5B + Starbucks (SBUX) $28B + Harley Davidson (HDI) $14.5B + Black & Decker (BKD) $6.5B and Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) $3.5B which were equal in value to Google's capitalization of $122B. As I am writing this, Google is presently valued at $127.5B, so we could add a seventh company, perhaps Cummin's (CMI) at 5.5B or maybe another growth stock American Eagle Outfitters (AEOS) at $5.3B. Buying AEOS would even leave us $200M to buy our own hotel resort in Hawaii or the Bahamas ... now that's "tight," as my 10-year-old likes to exclaim.

I am not trying to be glib here; just wondering what y'all been think'n 'bout. Seems to me if you offered Google management these seven companies plus the resort hotel free and clear in an even trade and they did not take it, they would be quite poor managers, or "resource allocators."