FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

Contents:

How and what:

• What markets does StockXloader support?
• What stock exchanges does StockXloader support?
• Can StockXloader get data for the fund/option XYZ?
• How do I get a ticker list for all stocks at an exchange?
• 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?
• Can I move the ticker lists to Dropbox so I can have them synchronized on two computers?
• How do I get support for StockXloader?

Things perceived as problems:

• No Dow Jones indexes!?
• No Spanish quotes!?
• The current snapshot doesn't change during the day?
• 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 and what:

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 downloadable 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 actually have some data from it). In StockXloader you can open this list by choosing the menu item 'Yahoo > Exchanges'. The list also contains the suffixes 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 ticker symbols for that exchange at Yahoo, and there is data in downloadable format, then StockXloader can download those data for those symbols.

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 — you will have to search around at Yahoo to see if it is there. For most options, there is no historical data.

NOTE: Yahoo Finance provides different versions for different regions and languages. You can see the available regions at the bottom of the page http://finance.yahoo.com, and StockXloader 4 can be set to open pages in the region/language of your choice. However, the content for the different regions can be very different. For instance, the US version provides an Options section under Investing, but the Yahoo sites for other regions do not seem to provide that. So, although you may prefer to read finance news in your own language, it may be necessary to go to the US site for searching if you cannot find what you are looking for using your local Yahoo version. In StockXloader, go to Preferences and set the Yahoo region to USA, thereafter all pages opened from within StockXloader will open the US version.

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 ticker symbols 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 'Yahoo > Exchanges'. 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 your ticker lists. Also, your broker probably has a good site for your market, and it probably has a list of interesting stocks. When you have identified the stocks you want to monitor, search for the corresponding symbols at Yahoo (use the menu item 'Yahoo > Ticker Symbol Lookup' from within StockXloader).

Although StockXloader can use a list with thousands of ticker symbols, 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: We recommend you to deal with a more reasonably sized list (perhaps a couple of hundred or so). If interest changes, it is easy to create a new list and just download those tickers for a few years of data.

Does StockXloader support intraday quotes?[BACK]

Answer: ProTA and StockXloader are basically intended for end-of-day quotes, but you can take "snapshots" during a day. If you have chosen to import the data to another program than ProTA (e.g Excel), StockXloader will include the time for each quote when you import snapshots, so that way you can get intraday quotes if you download snapshots several times during a day. For snapshots into ProTA, 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, and you can control this from StockXloader by setting the Preferences for ProTA to 'Existing Dates: Replace', since this will be communicated to ProTA when you import.

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. Another page you may look at is http://www.cboe.com/data/PutCallRatio.aspx.

Can I move the ticker lists to Dropbox so I can have them synchronized on two computer?[BACK]

Answer: Yes, you can move the folder that contains your ticker lists and temporary items to a location of your choice, such as Dropbox. To make this work, put an alias in its original place as follows:

1. In Finder, open the location where you want to store your ticker lists and downloaded items.
2. In StockXloader, choose menu item File > Show Ticker Lists in Finder.
3. Press the Command key and click the Finder window's title bar to choose Application Support.
4. Move the folder StockXloader 4 to your new location.
5. At the new location, press the Command and Alt keys and drag the StockXloader 4 folder back to the Application Support folder. That creates an alias with the exact same name in the Application Support folder.
6. Restart StockXloader.

In principle, you can have an alias (or symbolic link) for individual ticker lists, but this is not so smooth because if you delete a ticker list from within StockXloader, the alias will remain in its Application Support, and you would have to delete that alias manually to avoid problems.

How do I get support for StockXloader?[BACK]

Answer: The Help menu in StockXloader has some useful entries: First of all there is the short Read Me guide, then there is the full User Guide in pdf format. The Release Notes lists changes and possible "issues". Finally the Support & Troubleshooting web page, 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 Support & Troubleshooting web page.

Things perceived as problems:

No Dow Jones indexes!?[BACK]

Answer: This applies to all indexes from Dow Jones, such as ^DJI, ^DJA, ^DJY, ^DJU, ^DJUSBK, ^DJUSRE, ^DJCHOM. The answer from Yahoo (as of 2012-07-16) is: "At this time, Yahoo! Finance is not licensed to provide downloadable intraday or historical price data for Dow Jones Indexes. The situation is unique to the index data provided by Dow Jones.". Hence, although you can see the data on their web site, there is no link at the bottom Download Data (delayed) and Download to Spreadsheet for respectively snapshot and historical, for downloading the data as a comma-separated file (csv-file). Therefore, StockXloader can not fetch the data. Fortunately, this limited licensing does not affect publicly traded securities.

Yahoo's answer can be seen at Yahoo! Finance Help Community where you also can participate and give your view concerning this. You can also contact Dow Jones Indexes and express your concerns about their licensing and the lack of downloadable data.

You may also read Yahoo's knowledge base article SLN2332, published 2012-03, that mentions the same thing, but only for Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI).

You may want to check out an ETF alternative to ^DJI, namely DIA (SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ). It's history goes back to 1998.

No Spanish quotes!?[BACK]

Answer: There appears to be no data to download for Spain-based exchanges. The answer from Yahoo (as of 2013-02-07) is: "Data for all financial instruments (symbols) on Spain based exchanges can no longer be downloaded from Yahoo! Finance. This data can only be viewed on Yahoo! Finance pages". Yahoo's answer can be seen at: Yahoo Help!.

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. You can control this from StockXloader by setting the Preferences for ProTA to 'Existing Dates: Replace', since this will be communicated to ProTA when you import.

If you choose to import the data to another program than ProTA (e.g Excel or TextEdit), StockXloader will include the time for each quote when you import snapshots. 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.

There is no historical data for XYZ?[BACK]

Answer: It is Yahoo and 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 downloadable data. To find out more about this, see Support & Troubleshooting.

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 server return codes directly and presents a more sensible explanation in the StockXloader message log, in this case saying that there is no data for this ticker symbol 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. (The 404 pages will not even be downloaded in Lion, but Mountain Lion has a bug that makes them appear despite they should not.)

To re-download historical data, back the Last Date for the ticker symbol. When downloading snapshots, uncheck the Historical if you don't need historical or you already have them.

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 Support & Troubleshooting. You may then want to report the problem to Yahoo at eiher:
(1) The Yahoo! Answers Finance Help Community by registering and participate, where you should post under the category Yahoo! Products > Yahoo! Finance.
(2) The feedback page, where you may want to choose category Data accuracy or Historical data.

Strange quotes?[BACK]

Answer: If the content of the data is not what you expected, follow the procedure in Support & Troubleshooting.