A trading floor LED ticker has one job: put live prices in the eyeline of every desk without anyone looking up from a screen to find them. This case study explains how we designed, supplied and installed a 35 m, 250 mm high LED ticker, 17,920 × 128 pixels at a 1.95 mm pixel pitch, along the ceiling line of the level 6 trading floor at PIMCO‘s new London office at 25 Baker Street, Marylebone, nine years after we built the firm’s first LED ticker at 11 Baker Street. It is written for corporate real estate, workplace, AV and IT teams specifying a trading floor LED ticker for a new or refitted floor, and it covers the decisions that mattered: height and pitch for desk viewing distances, housing the ticker in the ceiling, who owns what in the fit-out, and how the data gets from the client’s platform to the LEDs.
Key takeaways
- PIMCO’s new London trading floor at 25 Baker Street runs a single 35 m LED ticker, 250 mm high and 17,920 × 128 pixels at a 1.95 mm pixel pitch, set into a housing along the ceiling line above the window wall.
- This is the second LED ticker Dynamo has built for PIMCO in London: the first, in 2017, was an 80 m U-shaped run at 11 Baker Street with a 3 mm pitch.
- On a new build the ticker belongs in the ceiling coordination from the first workshop: at 25 Baker Street that was November 2025, eight months before the panels were installed.
- For desks two to three metres from a display, Dynamo specifies fine-pitch indoor panels; PIMCO’s ticker uses 1.95 mm, and its 250 mm height (128 pixels) carries a logo tile plus symbol, price and movement on two lines.
- Fan-free power supplies are a line on the specification, not a fix after installation: PIMCO asked for them so the ticker adds no fan noise above the desks.
- The LED controller and the media player running the client’s market-data platform sit in the comms room, so nothing that processes content is above the trading floor.
Project facts
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Client | PIMCO, global investment manager |
| Location | Level 6 trading floor, east perimeter, 25 Baker Street, London W1 (Marylebone) |
| Building | New building by Derwent London with The Portman Estate, designed by Hopkins Architects, completed 2025; PIMCO occupies levels five to nine |
| Display | Indoor LED ticker, one continuous run, 35 m long |
| Pixel pitch | 1.95 mm (the client’s previous ticker was 3 mm) |
| Height | 250 mm |
| Resolution | 17,920 × 128 pixels (2,293,760 pixels in total) |
| Mounting | Set into a continuous housing boxed into the ceiling line by the fit-out contractor, fixing points by others |
| Power supplies | Silent, fan-free units specified at the client’s request |
| Data | Four Cat 6 cables from the display to the comms room, RJ45 both ends, all four live |
| Controller | New LED controller supplied and fitted by Dynamo, racked in the comms room with the media player |
| Content | Live market data from the client’s market-data platform: logo tile, ticker symbol, price and movement per entry |
| Installed | Panels July 2026; controller fitted and ticker commissioned August 2026; live content September 2026 |
| Dynamo scope | Design input at ceiling coordination, power and data specification, supply from European stock, installation, controller fit, commissioning, spares package |
The table is the specification; the rest of this post is about the coordination that put it into a new building’s ceiling.
What is a trading floor LED ticker?
A trading floor LED ticker is a long, thin LED display that scrolls live market data such as share prices and currency rates along a wall or ceiling line, so everyone on the floor reads the same feed without looking away from their desk. It is built from modular LED panels to any length and driven by an LED controller fed by a market-data platform. Clients also call it a stock ticker display or an office LED ticker; the hardware is the same.
Quick definitions
- Pixel pitch: the distance in millimetres between the centres of two neighbouring pixels. A smaller pitch gives sharper text at a shorter viewing distance.
- Ticker height: the height of the LED surface. Dynamo builds tickers from 80 mm to 960 mm high; 94 mm and 250 mm are current standard heights.
- Ceiling-line housing: a continuous channel built into the ceiling by the fit-out contractor that the ticker sits inside, so the display reads as part of the ceiling rather than a box fixed to it.
- LED controller: the hardware that takes a video signal and distributes it to the LED panels over data cable.
- Media player: the computer that runs the market-data platform and outputs the ticker content to the LED controller.
Why PIMCO came back for a second LED ticker
PIMCO came back to Dynamo when the move to a new building meant a new ticker rather than a relocation. Our 2017 LED ticker for PIMCO was an 80 m U-shaped run at 3 mm pitch around the trading floor at 11 Baker Street, replacing an earlier display from another supplier, with remote diagnostics. That post tells the first story; this one is about designing a ticker into a floor that was still being fitted out.
From 11 Baker Street to 25 Baker Street
The new office is a short walk along the same street in Marylebone. 25 Baker Street is a Derwent London development with The Portman Estate, designed by Hopkins Architects and completed in 2025, and PIMCO took levels five to nine. A new building changes the brief for a ticker. Nothing is fixed yet, so the ticker becomes one item among many on a reflected ceiling plan that also has to carry lighting, acoustic rafts, grilles and the window mullions, and the people who own that plan are the fit-out team, not the AV supplier.
In plain terms: on a refit you fit a ticker to a room; on a new build you design the room with the ticker in it.
What changed in nine years
The pitch is finer, the run is straight rather than U-shaped, and the data feed comes from the client’s own market-data platform. What has not changed is the reason a trading floor wants a ticker at all. Screens at the desk show what each trader has chosen to look at. The ticker shows what the whole floor should be seeing at the same moment, at a glance from any seat. We have built the same thing for other finance clients, including a 25 m ticker for Alpha FX’s trading floor, and the brief always comes down to two questions: how far away are the nearest desks, and how long does the run need to be?
Sizing a trading floor LED ticker for desk viewing distances
The ticker at 25 Baker Street is 35 m long and 250 mm high, 17,920 × 128 pixels at a 1.95 mm pitch: the length follows the east perimeter of the floor, and the height and pitch are set for a display read from a seated position at a trading desk. Those numbers come from the room, not from a catalogue.
Height
A 250 mm ticker is tall enough to carry a logo tile and two lines of information, the ticker symbol above the price and movement, at a size that reads from a seated position across a desk. Dynamo’s LED tickers are built from modular panels, so the height is chosen for the content and the room rather than fixed by the product. On a trading floor with desks close to the perimeter, 250 mm gives the two lines of text clear spacing without the ticker dominating the ceiling.
Pixel pitch
At 1.95 mm the ticker is finer than the 3 mm display PIMCO used at 11 Baker Street. Indoor DX Series panels in the 1.9 mm class are the fine end of what we specify for desks two to three metres from a display, and that is the right choice for a ticker read from a seated position with the nearest desks close to the run. Symbols, prices and logo tiles are small content, and the finer pitch is what keeps them clean at that distance. At 17,920 pixels along the run there is also room for every entry to scroll past without crowding.
Length
The run is 35 m, one continuous ticker along the east perimeter above the window wall. A single straight run is simpler than a folded or U-shaped layout because the content scrolls in one direction without being mapped around a corner. Where a floor does need corners, rigid panels turn them; see our 77 m ticker at Bob Bob Cité. A straight perimeter run was the right answer for this floor plate.
Housing a trading floor LED ticker in the ceiling line
The ticker at 25 Baker Street sits inside a continuous housing boxed into the ceiling by the fit-out contractor, with the fixing points provided in the ceiling structure, so the display reads as part of the architecture rather than a box bolted beneath it. Getting there took coordination that started long before any LED hardware was ordered.
Ceiling workshops from November 2025
The ticker was treated as a client-direct item in the fit-out team’s ceiling coordination workshops from November 2025. That meant its position, the east perimeter of level 6, was fixed on the reflected ceiling plan alongside the acoustic rafts, the grilles and the window mullions, and the setting-out between those elements had to be confirmed by the fit-out team before the ceiling was built. Our part was to confirm the display dimensions and fixing requirements and to issue the power and data specification for others to install.
In plain terms: the ticker had a drawn position on the ceiling plan before it had a purchase order.
Who owned what
On a new build the split of responsibility matters more than on a refit, because several trades are working in the same ceiling at the same time. On this project:
- The fit-out contractor built the housing and provided the fixing points in the ceiling.
- The electrical and data contractors ran the power and the Cat 6 cables to our specification.
- Dynamo supplied the LED panels, power supplies, spares and controller, installed the panels in the housing, fitted the controller and commissioned the display.
That split is normal for our LED screen installation work on commercial fit-outs, and agreeing it in writing early is what stops the ticker becoming the item that holds up a ceiling sign-off.
Silent power supplies
The ticker runs on fan-free power supplies because the client asked for a display that makes no noise above the desks. Many LED power supplies are fan-cooled, and on a trading floor, where the ticker sits a couple of metres above people who spend the day on the phone, that would be audible. PIMCO raised it, and the silent units went into the specification rather than being discovered as a problem after installation.
Data, comms room and the client’s market-data platform
Content reaches the ticker from a media player in the comms room, running the client’s market-data platform, which feeds an LED controller that distributes the signal to the panels over data cable. Nothing that processes content sits above the desks.
Four cables, all in use
We specified four Cat 6 data cables from the display back to the comms room, terminated RJ45 at both ends, and all four are live. At 17,920 × 128 pixels the run carries 2,293,760 pixels, more than a single Gigabit controller output can drive, so the signal from the LED controller reaches the ticker over four runs. Pulling a data cable during a fit-out is a small job. Pulling one after the ceiling is closed is a large one, which is why we ask for every data run up front.
The comms room
The LED controller and the media player are racked together in the comms room, with two 13 A sockets provided for them. The client’s market-data platform runs on the media player and outputs the ticker content to the controller. Because both sit in the comms room rather than on the floor, the client’s AV team can service, update or restart either without disturbing the trading floor.
Logo tiles and live prices
The content on the ticker, as photographed on the floor, is a stream of live entries: a company logo tile, the ticker symbol, the price and the movement with an up or down arrow, in red for a fall and green for a rise, on black. Logo tiles are small graphics, and a finer pitch is what keeps them recognisable from a desk.
The client runs its own market-data platform, so the content side of this project was the client’s. For clients who do not have a platform, Dynamo offers its own financial ticker software, which takes market data and RSS feeds and folds one continuous feed across multi-section runs, but it was not needed here. See also our Barton Peveril finance hub market-data display, another live market-data project.
From ceiling workshops to a live ticker: the timeline
The project ran from ceiling coordination in November 2025 to a live ticker in September 2026. The sequence was:
- November 2025: ceiling coordination workshops with the fit-out team; Dynamo issued the display dimensions and fixing requirements, and the power and data specification.
- February 2026: quotation issued for the ticker, silent power supplies, a spares package and a new controller.
- April 2026: order confirmed.
- July 2026: LED panels delivered from our European warehouse stock and installed in the housing.
- August 2026: LED controller fitted and the ticker commissioned, ahead of the floor opening at the end of the month.
- September 2026: live market-data content running and the installation closed out with the client’s AV team.
In plain terms: coordination from November, panels in July, commissioning in August before the floor opened, live content in September.
Why the long lead-in is the point
A ticker on a new trading floor is not a late addition. It needs a housing in the ceiling, fixings in the structure, power and data in the right place and a comms-room rack with space in it. All of those belong to other trades and all of them are decided early. The display itself is the quick part, and the coordination is where the time goes. See also the 1.2 mm LED wall we installed for Brevan Howard at 82 Baker Street, our other Baker Street project.
What a fit-out team should send us for a trading floor ticker
This is the information we work from on a trading floor ticker, and a short pack covering it from the fit-out or workplace team is enough for an accurate proposal:
- The floor plan with the intended run marked, including whether it is straight, folded or U-shaped.
- The distance from the run to the nearest desks, so the pitch and height can be set to the viewing distance.
- The ceiling detail where the ticker will sit, or confirmation that a housing will be built by the fit-out contractor.
- The location of the comms room and the data route back to it.
- Whether the client has a market-data platform or needs ticker software supplied.
- Any noise or brightness requirements, such as fan-free power supplies.
- Whether remote monitoring of the display is wanted, so the rack and network allowance covers it.
- The fit-out programme, so the panel installation lands after the ceiling is closed and before the floor opens.
More of our trading floor, corporate and retail LED projects are on the our work page.
From the field
I like going back to a client nine years on. The first PIMCO ticker was a replacement for an earlier display on an existing floor. This one was the opposite: a new building, a new floor, and the chance to design the ticker into the ceiling from the first coordination meeting rather than fit it to whatever was there. My rule on a project like this is that the comms room and the cabling are agreed before anyone talks about panels. If the data route and the rack space are settled in the autumn, the installation in the summer is just that, an installation.
The silent power supplies are the detail I would point other trading floors at. It is a small line on the specification and it is the difference between a ticker people notice for its information and one they notice for its hum.
Trading Floor LED Ticker: Frequently Asked Questions
How high should a trading floor LED ticker be?
It depends on what the ticker shows and how far away the nearest desks are. A ticker carrying a logo tile plus a symbol, price and movement on two lines reads well at 250 mm from a seated position at a desk, which is the height PIMCO’s 25 Baker Street floor uses: 128 pixels at a 1.95 mm pitch. Dynamo builds tickers from 80 mm to 960 mm high, and 94 mm and 250 mm are current standard heights.
What pixel pitch does a trading floor LED ticker need?
For desks two to three metres from the run, fine-pitch indoor panels give clean text and recognisable logos from a seated position. The 25 Baker Street ticker uses 1.95 mm, finer than the 3 mm of PIMCO’s previous ticker, and its 17,920 × 128 pixels give the content room to scroll cleanly. A ticker read from further away, such as across a reception, can use a coarser pitch without losing legibility.
Can an LED ticker be built into the ceiling rather than fixed to a wall?
Yes. At 25 Baker Street the ticker sits inside a continuous housing boxed into the ceiling line by the fit-out contractor, with fixing points provided in the ceiling structure. The housing has to be coordinated with the lighting, acoustic rafts and grilles on the reflected ceiling plan, so the ticker needs to be part of the ceiling design from the first coordination workshop rather than added once the ceiling is built.
How does live market data get onto an LED ticker?
A media player running the client’s market-data platform sits in the comms room and outputs the ticker content to an LED controller, which sends it to the panels over Cat 6 data cable. At 25 Baker Street PIMCO runs its own platform. For clients without one, Dynamo supplies its own financial ticker software, which takes market data and RSS feeds and maps one continuous feed across the run.
What should be installed in the comms room for an LED ticker?
The LED controller and the media player, racked together, with mains sockets for both and the data cables from the display terminated nearby. Dynamo specified two 13 A sockets and four Cat 6 cables at 25 Baker Street, all four live. Keeping the controller and media player in the comms room means the AV team can service or restart them without going onto the trading floor.
How early should a trading floor LED ticker enter the fit-out programme?
As soon as the ceiling layout and services are being coordinated. At 25 Baker Street that was November 2025, eight months before the panels were installed in July 2026 and nine before commissioning in August. The ticker’s housing, fixings, power and data all belong to other trades on a new build, so they need a place in the fit-out brief before the display hardware reaches the building.
A second trading floor LED ticker for the same client
The trading floor LED ticker at 25 Baker Street is the second we have built for PIMCO in London, and the two projects book-end what a ticker brief looks like: a replacement fitted to an existing floor in 2017, and a run designed into a new building’s ceiling from the first coordination meeting in 2025. The hardware decisions were all made from the room and the desks, and the ticker was commissioned before the floor opened. The range of heights and pitches we build tickers from is on our LED tickers page.
If you are planning a trading floor LED ticker for a new office or a refit, send us the floor plan, the run length and the distance to the nearest desks through our contact page, or phone +44 (0)203 489 9878, and we will come back with a written proposal for the ticker, the housing requirements and the data path.
Written by: Daniel Reynolds, Managing Director, Dynamo LED Displays
