FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

How and what:

• How do I get support for StockXloader?
• What markets does StockXloader support?
• What stock exchanges does StockXloader support?
• Can StockXloader get data for the fund/option XYZ?
• How do I create a new ticker list in StockXloader?
• How do I get a ticker list for all stocks at an exchange?
• How to get single stock data without downloading data for all the stocks in the list?
• Does StockXloader support intraday quotes?
• Can I take multiple "snapshots" during a given trading day?
• How about special market data files for general market indicators?

Things perceived as problems:

• The current snapshot doesn't change during the day?
• Why can't I get intraday snapshot for DJIA?
• Error: names are mapped to the wrong tickers!
• There is no historical data for XYZ?
• I got a "404 File not found — Sorry, the page you requested was not found"?
• Historical data for XYZ is several days old?
• Strange quotes?

How do I get support for StockXloader?[BACK]

Answer: The Help menu in StockXloader has some useful entries: First of all there is the User Guide in pdf format. Then there is a Read Me guide, and the Release Notes lists changes and possible "issues". Finally the Troubleshooting, which you should follow in case you have problems. In addition to these sources, this FAQ lists some common questions with answers. When all sources are explored, and you still have a problem, you can use the mail address listed at the bottom of the Troubleshooting guide.

What markets does StockXloader support?[BACK]

Answer: It is Yahoo that may or may not support a specific market or a certain security. StockXloader will download data for any market for which Yahoo has data. See the next question:

What stock exchanges does StockXloader support?[BACK]

Answer: You can get quotes from any exchange for which Yahoo carry data. The list http://finance.yahoo.com/exchanges presents the covered exchanges on Yahoo Finance (although I have discovered some rare cases of an echange not listed there despite they actyally have some data from it). In StockXloader you can open this list by choosing the menu item 'Tools > Yahoo Web Locations > Exchanges'. The list also contains the suffix used for different exchanges. If your exchange is not covered by Yahoo, then StockXloader can't download data for it. And conversely, if you can find tickers for that exchange at Yahoo, and there is data in downloadable format, then StockXloader can download those tickers.

Can StockXloader get data for the fund/option/currency XYZ?[BACK]

Answer: It is Yahoo that may or may not support a specific market or a certain security. StockXloader will download data for any market for which Yahoo has data in downloadable format. See the previous question for what exchanges there are data. Certain securities, such as options, can be tricky to find, and BragIt can not help you with that — you will have to search around at Yahoo to see if it is there. For most options, there is no historical data.

How do I create a new ticker list in StockXloader?[BACK]

Answer: You simply edit one of the existing lists: the EU, US, A or X-list.

How do I get a ticker list for all stocks at an exchange?[BACK]

Answer: As yet, there is no automatic method from Yahoo to get all tickers for an exchange. For certain indexes, however, there should be information about which shares are included in the index computation, by following the procedure:

Use the menu item 'Tools > Yahoo Web Locations > Major World Indices'. Then click your way a few times to get to the index you are interested in. Example: the page http://finance.yahoo.com/intlindices?e=asia lists Asian indexes, where one of them is '^HSI' for Hang Seng. Click on 'Components' to see its components (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cp?s=%5EHSI). For some indexes, however, such as Nikkei 225, Yahoo doesn't list its components as yet.

When you have found the interesting tickers, enter them in one of the ticker lists. Also, you can look at a site for your market that lists interesting stocks. (Your broker probably has a good site.) When you have identified the stocks you want to monitor, search for the corresponding tickers at Yahoo (use the menu item 'Tools > Yahoo Web Locations > Ticker Symbol Lookup' from within StockXloader).

Although StockXloader can use a list with thousands of tickers, it is not advisable to do so! Even if the computer manages it, you will choke! Beware that name changes, company merges, splits, fusions, etcetera are very common. If you try to keep thousands of tickers up to date, you are sure in for late evenings! In other words: I recommend you to deal with a more reasonably sized list (perhaps a hundred or so). If interest changes, it is pretty easy to enter some new tickers in the X-list and just download those for a few years of data.

How to get single stock data without downloading data for all the stocks in the list?[BACK]

Answer:That's what the X-list is for: think of the list [X] as a temporary extra list for getting quotes for some individual ticker you may be interested in—it makes it easy to "catch up" on a single ticker or a few tickers without having to modify any of the other lists.

Does StockXloader support intraday quotes?[BACK]

Answer: ProTA and StockXloader are intended for end-of-day quotes, but you can take "snapshots" during a day. See the next question for a more refined question.

Can I take multiple "snapshots" during a given trading day?[BACK]

Clarification of question: Can each "snapshot" over-ride a previous "snapshot" and appear in ProTA as the most current snapshot? I would like to be able to take a snapshot 30 minutes before closing and then a snapshot after closing and have the last snapshot be updated in ProTA as the final opening, closing, etc for each stock.

Answer: Yes! ProTA has a setting that controls whether new values will replace earlier values or not. Read Chapter 6 in the User Guide for StockXloader; it tells you how to automatically control this.

You use the source 'YahooCurrent' in StockXloader for getting the most recent quotes of the day. However, as for volume, it varies — most tickers do not get volume info during the day, but only in the historical database, whereas some (^DJI e.g) also get volume during the current day. So it may be wise to re-download historical data later if you want to also get volume.

How about special market data files for general market indicators?[BACK]

Answer: General market indicators, such as advance/declines or put/call ratio, require special market data files. Only some US stock exchanges can provide such general market data to some data vendors, but most other stock exchanges do not provide such data in any format at all to any data vendor.

Currently, Yahoo does not offer such files, and StockXloader can not fetch such files. Although Yahoo has a page for advance/decline data, http://finance.yahoo.com/advances, it doesn't offer any way to download it as a spreadsheet file, and there is no historical data, which reduces the value of it for TA-analysis. As of this writing, however, http://unicorn.us.com/advdec/ provides advances/declines for some US exchanges that you can manually download and import to ProTA. StockXloader does currently not fetch data from Unicorn Research Corporation.

The current snapshot doesn't change during the day?[BACK]

Answer: First of all, if you are looking at changes in ProTA, you must set its preference so that new values replace old values. Read Chapter 6 in the User Guide for StockXloader; it tells you how to automatically control this.
You can see the exact time of day of the quote by doing:
Choose the menu item 'Tools > StockXloader Files'. Then open the folder 'Temporary quote files'. Open the particular file for the day (which is named like 'Yahoo20070313(US).csv') in a text editor, such as TextEdit. You can see the time of day there, such as "3:25pm". In successive downloads, you can verify that this time changes, provided there is any trading in this security.

If the time really does not change, then go to Yahoo and manually check what is happening — maybe there is no trading in this security, or Yahoo will not provide new values right now for this ticker for whatever reason. Normally, it will change.

Why can't I get intraday snapshot for DJIA?[BACK]

Answer: This applies to the ticker ^DJI. The answer from Yahoo (as of 2010-11-02) is: "Yahoo! is no longer licensed to provide Dow Jones Index data for download of the current day's data". Hence, although you can see the current quotes on their web site, there is no link at the bottom "Download Data" for downloading the data as a comma-separated file (csv-file). Therefore, StockXloader can not fetch the data. So far, Yahoo has not been able to present information as to which tickers they no longer are licensed to provide data for download of the current day's data, but I am only aware of the issue with ^DJI, whereas all the other indexes I have tried work well for intraday snapshots, and no customer has reported any similar problem with any other ticker.

Good alternatives are Dow Jones Composite Average ^DJA, or ^DJT, or ^DJU. You get intraday snaphots with these.

Error: names are mapped to the wrong tickers![BACK]

Answer: This error is fixed in version 3.4.7. The error was directly related to the problem with DJIA, as described in the previous question/answer, namely that "Yahoo! is no longer licensed to provide Dow Jones Index data for download of the current day's data". (If you had ^DJI in your ticker list (US) and you were downloading current day's data, StockXloader got confused by not receiving anything at all for ^DJI, and because of this, all names were shifted.)

The workaround in version 3.4.6 was to change the setting in the Universal Text Importer in ProTA so as to uncheck "Replace Existing Security Names". But since the issue is fixed (or circumvented) in version 3.4.7, you can now re-enable "Replace Existing Security Names" if you like, without the risk of names being mapped to the wrong tickers.

There is no historical data for XYZ?[BACK]

Answer: It is Yahoo, or their data provider, that may or may not support historical data for a specific security. StockXloader will download data for any market for which Yahoo has data. To find out if the problem is with Yahoo or StockXloader, follow the procedure in the document Troubleshooting, available from the Help menu.

I got a "404 File not found — Sorry, the page you requested was not found"?[BACK]

Answer: This message you found is the Yahoo way of saying that there is no data for the requested ticker. It is the page they return along with a 404 return code (file not found), and there is no point for you to read that, since it's meaning is not obvious to you. StockXloader interprets the responses and presents a more sensible explanation in the StockXloader message log, in this case saying that there is no data for this ticker in the requested time frame. This is either because the ticker is wrong or that the ticker might be correct but there is no data in the requested time frame, i.e after the specified Last Date.

- To see what the Last Date was when you downloaded, look in the Message Log drawer.
- To get historical data, back the Last Date for this source.
- Uncheck the YahooHistorical if you don't need historical or you already have them.
- If you have a tick mark by YahooCurrent, however, you will get current quotes for today (except for DJIA since Yahoo no longer has a license for that)

The message speaks the truth: there ARE no new historical quotes to be downloaded if you do snapshots during the day. (And the 404 'file not found' is their way of saying that.)

Historical data for XYZ is several days old?[BACK]

Answer: Unfortunately, this happens every now and then, and is caused by data feed problems at Yahoo. To analyze the problem further, follow the procedure in the help document Troubleshooting, available from the Help menu in StockXloader. You may then want to report the problem to Yahoo, and the procedure for doing so is also described in this Troubleshooting document, under Content problems, step 2.

Strange quotes?[BACK]

Answer: If the content of the data is not what you expected, follow the procedure in the Troubleshooting, available from the Help menu.