How to download data?

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uhoh
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Post by uhoh »

Last edited by Peculiar_Investor on 07 Feb 2014 07:04, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by arnyk »

Ok so I recently upgraded to Excel 2007 (after much resistance) - and thus the troubles started. I'm getting random "VALUE" errors for certain stocks when trying to retrieve market cap values. Usually 15-20 random ones return "VALUE" errors, screws up my spreadsheet nicely.

I'm wondering if there's a limit to the number of quotes they can "pull" off msn at one time? I'm getting close to 250 here...solutions?
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Post by brad911 »

I had multiple problems with the MSN functions with the new Excel during the summer & ended up re-doing my spreadsheets using the yahoo tags teaching myself off Gummy's template.

It was a monster to adapt, but well worth the effort. It's not perfect for all information I'm used to getting, but now it's pretty much maintenance free.
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Post by arnyk »

Ok I found this:

http://www.mrexcel.com/archive/General/30967.html

They're speaking some voodoo excel language that I don't understand lol, gummy???????
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Post by patch »

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Post by Bulldogge »

patch wrote:this might be of interest as well: http://indiainvestor.wordpress.com/2007 ... om-method/
I use the smf add-in in Excel 2007 and it works fine - best of all its free with an active user email list if you are having problems.
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Post by brad911 »

Anyone having problems with some of the yahoo tags recently?

I can't get info downloaded into my spreadsheet for X.to, CL or CWT-UN.to
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Shakespeare
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Post by Shakespeare »

CWT isn't downloading for me. But I just put the price and date in manually.
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Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Yahoo hasn't handled the TOC.TO -> TRI.TO symbol change very well either. I would have expected that the TOC.TO historical data would carry forward with TRI.TO, but unfortunately Yahoo is treating TRI.TO as a new symbol, with no real history.

That said, there does appear to be some "old" history related to whomever had the TRI.TO symbol until Mar 6, '08.
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Post by gummy »

For the first time (today) I can't download WTN.TO to my spreadsheet :?
http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quo ... N.TO&f=nl1

I suspect it's the beautiful Spring weather ...
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Post by kumquat »

gummy wrote:I suspect it's the beautiful Spring weather ...
Come west and enjoy a blizzard. :(
I don't intend to offend anyone, that part is just a bonus.

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Excel spreadsheet that maps out dividend/earnings history?

Post by onyourtail »

I recently scanned through a (possibly old) thread that included info for a spreadsheet/macro that will map out dividend and earnings history for a given company/stock. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find it again. I believe it included calculations for average annual dividend and earnings increases over some number of years, and had other data for determining whether a stock was a good buy candidate (from a dividend growth investing perspective).

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Hopefully I can be directed to the existing thread and/or be provided with the info req'd to access the spreadsheet/macro.
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Post by BRIAN5000 »

http://dividendinvestors.ca/

not exactly what your looking for but may help.
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Post by onyourtail »

Thanks, Brian. I don't think I'll be coughing up $250 to go further back than 5 years though (max of 10). Perhaps I only dreamt of the spreadsheet :?:
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Post by epson600 »

Something like these? Its a static list so you cant put in your own stocks but they are chosen from a dividend growth perspective.

CDN & US Dividend growth
http://www.dividendgrowth.org/Report.htm

U.S. Dividend Champions
http://www.dripinvesting.org/tools/tools.htm
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Post by onyourtail »

Thanks Epson - still not what I remember seeing, but the links look useful too, and might be as good as if not better than what I'm looking for.

The spreadsheet I'm remembering was downloadable into Excel, IIRC, and would download data for a stock upon request (via macro). I believe the info presented for each stock was around 8-10 rows by maybe 12-15 columns (with some cells being merged) - all the text was black and bold font, with I think (black) borders used around row and column headings (and perhaps also around all the data fields/cells). I can't remember if there would be multiple stocks/sheet, or if each stock had its own sheet, or if a query was possible for just 1 stock at a time.

I know it's a long shot, but hopefully this added description will trigger something in someone's mind. If not, (thanks to Brian and yourself) at least I have other ways of finding similar info.
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Post by Small Investor Activist »

Can someone tell me where to get free stock quotes besides Globeinvestor which doesn't work well.
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Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Bulldogge wrote:
patch wrote:this might be of interest as well: http://indiainvestor.wordpress.com/2007 ... om-method/
I use the smf add-in in Excel 2007 and it works fine - best of all its free with an active user email list if you are having problems.
Ok, I've been fiddling with the SMF add-in to extend my investing spreadsheets and I've hit a couple of questions, related to CDN stocks, so I though I'd check in here first.

1) Does anyone have a reliable source for the current dividend for CDN stocks. Yahoo! Finance and MSN are lacking on this one.

2) Given all the Balance Sheet concerns, particularly debt load and debt/equity ratio, again does anyone have a reliable source for these items.

Hopefully someone using the SMF add-in can chime in with the specific element numbers used.

Thanks in advance.
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Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Has anyone tried to use Google Finance to download historical quotes for Canadian stocks to a spreadsheet? As far as I can tell, it can be done for US stocks, but for some unexplained reason, it doesn't work for CDN stocks.

Try http://finance.google.ca/finance/historical?q=NYSE:BCE and notice the link for Download to spreadsheet
Now try, http://finance.google.ca/finance/historical?q=TSE:BCE which does not have a "Download to spreadsheet" link, which I think should be http://finance.google.ca/finance/histor ... output=csv

I'm trying to get historical data for some TSX dual class stocks, such as Astral Media (ACM.a) and Yahoo! Finance has a bug with regard to a number of these symbols.
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Post by olieb »

it can be done for US stocks, but for some unexplained reason, it doesn't work for CDN stocks.
You're right, that's strange. The info looks easy to scrape (automatically) though, and doing so would save you having to explicitly save as csv then enter into the spreadsheet. I just moved my stuff over to OpenOffice and pull all kinds of data from web pages via their Links feature - wonderful stuff.
Does anyone have a reliable source for the current dividend for CDN stocks?
Don't use it much myself, but I'd hope the TSX/TMX website would be accurate.
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Post by Arby »

I have two old spreadsheets which I use to import stock quotes into Excel. One spreadsheet uses the Excel add-in for MSN Stocks Quotes, and the other uses the add-in for Yahoo Finance. Neither add-in works any more (at least not for Canadian preferred share quotes). Has anyone found an Excel add-in that currently works for importing Cdn preferred share quotes into Excel?
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Post by brad911 »

Arby wrote:I Has anyone found an Excel add-in that currently works for importing Cdn preferred share quotes into Excel?
I have a yahoo-based excel program that I heavily modified from Gummy's original download program that I still use for tracking the preferred share market.

What type of data do you want to download?
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Arby
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Post by Arby »

I just want to download the current stock price. I think Gummy's program uses the Excel add-in YF Quote to download Yahoo Finance quotes, which I am using. The YF Quote add-in worked fine on my spreadsheet a few months ago, but now it returns a stock price of $0 for all my quotes.
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Post by Peculiar_Investor »

Arby wrote:I just want to download the current stock price. I think Gummy's program uses the Excel add-in YF Quote to download Yahoo Finance quotes, which I am using. The YF Quote add-in worked fine on my spreadsheet a few months ago, but now it returns a stock price of $0 for all my quotes.
Is it this add-in? http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/smf_addin/

If so, you may need to download the latest update, as some website data formats have changed.

If not, you may want to check out the SMF Addin. It has many useful functions and can download from many different sites. Due to the US centric nature of financial websites, there is a reduced set of data available for CDN stocks.
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Post by Arby »

My spreadsheet with the YF Quote add-in is now working OK. The problem was with my firewall, which for some unknown reason had been set to block access from Excel. Peculiar_Investor, thanks for the link about the SMF add-in. It looks better than YF Quote, and it even has documentation.
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