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M is the Roman numeral for a thousand. MM should be two-thousand, but has come to mean 'a thousand thousands' e.g. a million.

It's a semi-common generic Millions indicator, not specific to finance. I prefer to just use "m" instead.

Think Millipede, where Milli is 1,000. Milli Milli = MM = 1,000 * 1,000.

> MM ("thousand thousands", from Latin "Mille" ...)

Repeating a letter indicating an abbreviated word is an oldfashioned way of pluralising it.

For example, 'pp' to represent 'pages'.

I believe it's from latin, and is not so old-fashioned in the many countries it's (still) used! e.g. in spanish, USA is EEUU (Estados Unidos)