Step-By-Step Guide to Downloading

Yahoo! Financial Data with HSQuote

by
Jui-Pin Er
August 2004

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Table of Contents

1. Manually Download Stock Quotes from Yahoo! Finance Website 3

2. Benefits of Using an Automated Data Downloader 5

3. Main Screen Shot of HSQuote 6

4. Simple Daily Download Procedure with HSQuote 7

5. Create Ticker Lists 8

5.1 Manually enter Yahoo! Ticker symbols 8

5.2 Download and use pre-packaged ticker lists 8

5.3 Assemble tickers from Yahoo! Sites 9

5.4 Create Currencies symbols 9

5.5 Create Metals symbols 9

6. Output Files 11

6.1 Select Output File Format 11

6.2 Personalized File Settings 12

7. Conclusion 13

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1. Manually Download Stock Quotes from Yahoo! Finance Website

Yahoo! Finance website provides a wealth of financial data for free. One of the most valuable data is its
historical stock quotes (http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/fin/quote/quote-02.html). You can view historical
daily, weekly, or monthly stock quotes or download data in spreadsheet format, using one of the two
methods below:

1. If you already know the Stock Symbol used at Yahoo, go to Step 6. Otherwise, look it up first at
the URL address: http://finance.yahoo.com/l. Enter any part of the stock, company or index name,
select the appropriate Type and Market, then press the ‘Look Up’ button.

2. Select the Symbol you want.

3. The ‘Quotes and Info’ page of the selected Symbol will appear. Click on ‘Historical Prices’
hyperlink on the left side-bar.

4. You will get a table of historical prices as shown below. You may change the Start Date, End
Date, and choose Daily, Weekly, or Monthly data. Note that only about three months of daily data
is displayed. You can use the ‘First/Prev/Next/Last’ hyperlinks at the bottom of the table to
browse for more data.

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5. If you want these data to be downloaded as a spreadsheet file, you can click on the link
‘Download To Spreadsheet’ at the bottom of the table. It is a .csv format file that you can save and
use it in Windows Excel application.

6. If you already know the Stock Symbol, you can directly enter the following URL address in your
Internet browser. Replace the word SYMBOL with the stock symbol.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=SYMBOL

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2. Benefits of Using an Automated Data Downloader

While you may enjoy free data services from Yahoo, it is very time consuming if you have many
stocks to download and to store such data in a database everyday for technical analysis. For non-US
stocks, Yahoo servers only send 200 records at a time, making historical data download for a longer
period very cumbersome. It is better off investing in a low-cost data downloader software tool to do the
job. HSQuote from HSQ Digital Products is one such tool (http://www.1free-historical-stock-quotes-
downloader.com).

HSQuote downloads stock quotes on major stock exchanges around the world FREE, as well as market
indices, Forex, commodity futures, mutual funds, money market funds, corporate bonds, and metals.
The generated data are compatible with Metastock, TradeStation, OmniTrader, TC2000, Advanced
Get, CandlePower, Elliott Wave, Analyzer II, Gannalyst, Supercharts, ElWave, Windows Excel, and
more... There is no monthly subscription, and you can download anytime and as often as you need. It
facilitates data downloading in the following ways:

- Link to world-wide stock symbol look-up, charts and news at Yahoo! Finance website.
- Keep up to 2000 ticker files in each portfolio. You can have as many portfolios as you wish.
- Auto-download for different portfolio files at one go, by linking all the portfolio files together.
- Automatically convert to MetaStock files or your personalized ASCII text format in the download
process.
- Choose download of Daily, Weekly, or Monthly data. 20-minute delay real-time data from local
data sources are available too. Even alert you if no newer data is available yet.
- Up to 60 parallel download processing threads to drastically shorten download time. Intelligently
adjust Internet connection time in parallel historical data download.
- Know your last download period for each portfolio and continue from when you left off.
- View MetaStock data directly. Auto-repair of data while viewing, either online or offline.
- Auto-detect, confirm and adjust for stock split data.
- Auto-update MetaStock names without manual entry.
- Keep your default stock list, output format setting and corresponding download servers. Coupled
with the tracking of the last download period, and automatic conversion to MetaStock files, you
can have a One-Click download the next time – just press the Start button! For the advanced users,
you may even choose to auto-download for the default portfolio, and use Microsoft Task
Scheduler in the Control Panel, to auto-start the program and auto-download data at fixed
schedule.

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3. Main Screen Shot of HSQuote

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4. Simple Daily Download Procedure with HSQuote

1. Make sure you are connected to the Internet, and you can surf the Internet.
2. Select a Ticker file from the ‘Portfolio’ section.
3. Select the Output Format – MetaStock or Personalized Text.
4. Select the Download Period, and enable ‘Daily’ download.
5. Click the ‘Start’ button. The download process will start. When data for a stock is being
downloaded, the corresponding ticker symbol will be highlighted.
6. When successfully executed, a dialog box will appear, announcing the successful
completion.
7. If the connection is bad, after a few minutes, the program will time out, and a warning
message will appear. If you are already in the middle of data download, this phenomenon
may happen while the data server is too busy. You can choose to continue the download
process from where it stopped.
8. You may abort the download process by pressing the Pause/Exit button. You may
double-click the next ticker and then the ‘Start’ button again to continue downloading.

Linking ticker lists for single download:

You may link several ticker files together so as to auto-download all of them at one go. For
example, appending 'PORTFOLIO2.TIC' to the end of the list of ticker symbols in portfolio1.tic file
will continue the download to tickers in portfolio2.tic. Each ticker file can have its own data server.
Then go to the Preference screen (Click ‘Open Menu’ button and select ‘Preference’),
• Select ‘Enable download of linked ticker files’
• Choose whether to ‘Use same start date as first ticker file’. If not chosen, the start date
for each ticker file is the last record date in the previous download of this particular ticker
file.

Auto-download data from the default portfolio:

In the main screen, select the ticker list in the Portfolio. Click the ‘Set As Default’ button to make it
the default file when the HSQuote program starts.

Go to the Preference screen (Click ‘Open Menu’ button and select ‘Preference’),
• Select ‘Auto download at startup’
• Select ‘No message prompting during download’ (to avoid user intervention)

Now, upon startup of HSQuote, download process will automatically start from the default
portfolio. Remember you can link all your ticker lists as mentioned above.

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5. Create Ticker Lists

The most ‘tedious’ task of using HSQuote is the one-time effort to create your own ticker lists.
The ‘Create Ticker List’ button on the main screen provides many helpful animated topics about
how to get free ticker lists and how to assemble your own lists from Yahoo website resources.
New users should take a tour on the different topics:

1. Manually enter Yahoo! ticker symbols

2. Download and use pre-packaged ticker lists
3. Assemble tickers from Yahoo! sites
4. Link ticker lists together for one-click download
5. Create Currencies list for use with Oanda server
6. Create Commodity Futures list for Brite Futures server

In this article, the first three topics will be described (but the animated help still makes it easier to
understand.)

5.1 Manually enter Yahoo! Ticker symbols

If you already know the symbols used with Yahoo website (Symbol Lookup at http://finance.yahoo.com/l)
and your lists only have a couple of tickers. It is viable to enter them manually.

1. Enter a new portfolio name (.tic automatically appended).

2. Click inside the Ticker box.
3. A blank list or the previously stored list will be shown in he Ticker box.
4. Use normal text editing operation to enter Yahoo symbols, one on each line.
5. Alternatively, you may enter the symbols in the small box below the ‘Create Ticker List’
button, and press the ‘Add’ button. This method also prevents symbol duplication.
6. Similarly, you may use Backspace key to remove a symbol, or enter the symbol in the small
box then press the ‘Del’ button t delete it.

5.2 Download and use pre-packaged ticker lists

HSQ Digital Products has assembled component stocks of some 50 world-wide indices. You can download
from http://www.1free-historical-stock-quotes-downloader.com/free/indexlist.zip and use them directly in
HSQuote.

Fred Denys, the President of Holland ??? Club, has specifically made available a list for Dutch stocks.
(Fred, if you want, I can host your list on my website, and let your club members access it.)

1. Use the above link to download pre-packaged ticker lists.

2. Unzip the downloaded file to any folder.
3. Copy a ticker list to HSQuote data folder by clicking the ‘Copy From’ button. Browse to the
folder where the ticker files are stored, and select one.
4. If the same ticker file already exists in HSQuote data folder, you will be asked whether to
overwrite it.

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5.3 Assemble tickers from Yahoo! sites

You can find Yahoo ticker symbols from the following website links. These symbols can be used
directly with HSQuote.

Yahoo! Major World Indices:

http://finance.yahoo.com/intlindices?u

Yahoo! Major US Indices:

http://finance.yahoo.com/indices?u

Yahoo! Europe/US Stock Lists:

http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/p/uk/cpi/index.html

Yahoo! Asia Pacific Stock Lists:

http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/i/

Yahoo! help on exchanges:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/fin/quote/quote-19.html

Use the following method to create ticker list from the abovementioned websites.

1. Open a blank Microsoft Excel worksheet and a blank Notepad.

2. Browse the above websites. Usually you can find the 'Components' link for the index, or an alphabetical
order list of stocks for a country. Click on the link.
3.If a table is presented on the browser, use your mouse to highlight/select the whole table, starting from
the first row to the end of the table. Just select the whole table, press ctrl-c to copy it.
4. Now go to the Excel sheet, press ctrl-v to paste the whole table onto it. You just want the column that
lists the ticker symbols. Select the whole column, press ctrl-c.
5. Go to the blank Notepad, press ctrl-v to paste it. Save the list of tickers with an extension .tic.

5.4 Create Currencies symbols for historical data download from Yahoo!
Yahoo provides limited currencies data with conversion to US dollars only.

^ECU EURO INDEX (Onlyenter the left column symbols)

^XCD CAN DOLLAR
^CAD AUSTR DOLLAR
^BPW BRITISH POUND
^XJY JAPAN YEN
^EDA AUST DOLLAR

Note that HSQuote supports more complete currencies data download from Oanda.com server.

5.5 Create Metals symbols for historical data download from Yahoo!

The following quotes for precious metals are currently supported at Yahoo, using the 20-min
delayed Real-Time download only.

XAUUSD=X for Gold (Only enter the left column symbols)

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XPDUSD=X for Palladium
XPTUSD=X for Platinum
XAGUSD=X for Silver

Note that HSQuote supports a much wider range of historical commodity futures download from
Brite Futures Inc.

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6. Output Files
6.1 Select Output File Format

You may choose either the output format that is fully compatible to MetaStock, or your own
personalized ASCII text and spread-sheet formats. The output file will carry the same file name
as the input portfolio file by default, but you can change it, by editing the File Name.

Note that A SUB-DIRECTORY WITH THE NAME OF THE PORTFOLIO FILE WILL BE
GENERATED and THE OUTPUT FILE WILL BE LOCATED IN THIS SUB-DIRECTORY. This
structure keeps all your downloaded data separate for the different Ticker files.

For Metastock data format, an ASCII file with the extension .prn will always be generated. You
can let the program convert to MetaStock Files directly by selecting ‘Convert to MS Files’. The
MetaStock data files, Fxx.DAT (first 255 files) and Fxx.MWD (from 256th to 2000th files), will be
stored in the same sub-directory as the output .prn file. You may keep up to 2000 ticker files in
each portfolio directory. This is a convenient way to accumulate downloaded data in the internal
database.

Using MetaStock data as inputs to most charting programs is the easiest method. However, if
your charting program cannot take MetaStock format data, you can use the very flexible
‘Personalized Format’ in ASCII, text or spread-sheet. You can have your own column sequence,
date and time formats, delimiter, header exclusion, date order, omitting caret and country suffix,
renaming of output file, etc. Click the ’Set’ button or go to Advanced Features/Preference section
to change your personalized settings. The output file, named given in the File Name window, will
be generated in the download process. This file will have the downloaded data for all the tickers.

If your charting program needs to have individual stock files instead of a combined stock file, you
can select the ‘Individual Stock Files’ option. A subdirectory ‘Text-Files’ will be created, and all the
individual stock files generated with the same selected personalized format will be stored in this
subdirectory.

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6.2 Personalized File Settings

Personalized Text or Spread Sheet Output Format:

- You may define your own personalized text or spread sheet output format and column
sequence. Click the Clear Columns button, and click the column items in left to right
order. The .csv format by definition requires Comma Separation, therefore when a non-
comma is chosen as the delimiter, the file extension will be switched to .txt. You may
change it to .prn.
- Many regional stocks have Yahoo symbols ending with the country suffix. You may
remove it in the output text file.
- If ‘Individual Stock Files’ in the main screen is also selected, you have an option whether
to merge newly downloaded data with the existing files. Choose the ‘Merge new data in
individual stock files’. If the output file is too big, you may define the ‘Output starts fr:’
date.

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7. Conclusion

As an Internet-trader, you should take full advantage of the available data sources on the
Internet, especially from the reliable and free Yahoo! Finance sites. However, it is better that you
let an automated downloader tool do the job of gathering and downloading data, and spare you to
analyze downloaded information timely.

For a one-time investment of US$27.95, you can get HSQuote software for more than doing data
downloading task. It comes with a versatile Data Converter to convert between MetaStock format
and any other ASCII text format, even generating multiple worksheets on single Excel file. It also
provides automatic repair of data during download and while viewing internally stored data, auto-
download of MetaStock names, and assistance of stock splits processing. If you have a
broadband connection, you can even open up to 60 parallel threads for fast data download. It is
also easy to set up, easy to use, and most importantly, HSQ Digital Products provides good
technical support and free update of HSQuote.

You can download a 21-day free trial but fully functional version of HSQuote from:
http://www.1free-historical-stock-quotes-downloader.com/HSQuote.exe

A complete User Guide and animated help come with the download software. For more
information on HSQuote, please visit the website:
http://www.1free-historical-stock-quotes-downloader.com

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