# Download Stock Financial Information



## FinancialJungle (Apr 22, 2009)

Does anyone know of a free or almost free source to download financial data of the S&P 500 constitutes? By financial, I mean revenues, profits, cashflow, dividends, margins, and also historical values. And the data doesn't have to be current.

XML or CSV format would be ideal. The idea is to upload this to a database so I can run my own custom screens as none of the stock screens out there meet all my needs. 

I worked with Capital IQ on a project before, but they charge $800US for an annual membership. Honestly, I think that's a fair price, but if there's a less expensive althernative, why not?


----------



## FrugalTrader (Oct 13, 2008)

This excel plugin may do the trick:
http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/excel-stock-quotes.html


----------



## msimms (Apr 17, 2009)

I do it the slow way, I scan over Valueline reports down at the Library. And if I find a company I like from the quick review of the last 10 years of Valueline data on the company (because the report tables let you do this so easily), I'll build the Excel file myself via sec.gov 10K filings (gotta read 'em all too!).

The slowest part about this whole process is saving up enough money to make a large meaningful investment so trading commissions will eat up next to nothing.


----------



## Brad911 (Apr 19, 2009)

I have a gridstone account JG that I hardly use (courtesy of Seeking Alpha). I'm pretty sure their software will give you what you want. Are you performing a screen or just interested in specific companies?

There's a nifty excel add-in that you can use and the data I've seen (just farting around in the web-based program) is good. I tend to crunch my numbers long hand from financial statements, but if you want to use the account send me a nod via email and we'll talk.


----------



## cannon_fodder (Apr 3, 2009)

FinancialJungle said:


> Does anyone know of a free or almost free source to download financial data of the S&P 500 constitutes? By financial, I mean revenues, profits, cashflow, dividends, margins, and also historical values. And the data doesn't have to be current.
> 
> XML or CSV format would be ideal. The idea is to upload this to a database so I can run my own custom screens as none of the stock screens out there meet all my needs.
> 
> I worked with Capital IQ on a project before, but they charge $800US for an annual membership. Honestly, I think that's a fair price, but if there's a less expensive althernative, why not?


Have you downloaded msnmoney's stock screener applet? I'm not sure if it will handle everything you want but I remember looking at it before and was disappointed there wasn't anything like this for Canadian indices.

I know I can screen online - what I never checked out was the ability to offload the info to a file.


----------



## Arcaneind (Apr 3, 2009)

cannon_fodder said:


> Have you downloaded msnmoney's stock screener applet? I'm not sure if it will handle everything you want but I remember looking at it before and was disappointed there wasn't anything like this for Canadian indices.
> 
> I know I can screen online - what I never checked out was the ability to offload the info to a file.


http://ca.moneycentral.msn.com/investor/finder/custstoc.asp?Symbol=

Looks like the very basic MSN stock screener for Canada


----------



## daveking (Apr 3, 2009)

I am a Google Spreadsheet and Google Finance fan.

For example, to get the latest Apple Inc. stock price you type this in the google spreadsheet cell:

=googlefinance("AAPL", "price")

If you want a list of closing prices for a date range you can type:
=googlefinance("AAPL", "close", "2009-01-01", "2009-05-31")


Read more here
http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=54198


----------



## FinancialJungle (Apr 22, 2009)

Thank for all the replies. Sadly I'm not as competent in Excel as you guys. But your suggestions gave me an idea to create a tool to crawl public sites, and download financial data into a format that I can work with.


----------



## mfd (Apr 3, 2009)

there are modules out there that already do this using Yahoo finance. I'm not sure what kind of programing background you have but you can look at these ones 

http://www.transparentech.com/opensource/yahoofinance

http://search.cpan.org/~edd/Finance-YahooQuote-0.21/YahooQuote.pm


----------



## moneymusing (Apr 3, 2009)

daveking said:


> I am a Google Spreadsheet and Google Finance fan.
> 
> For example, to get the latest Apple Inc. stock price you type this in the google spreadsheet cell:
> 
> ...


Thanks Dave. I was wondering about this. Cheers.


----------



## ethos1 (Apr 4, 2009)

If any of these below can be of any use to you, these are what I use

http://www.stockta.com/cgi-bin/analysis.pl?symb=QQQQ&num1=

http://www.profitspi.com/stock-quote/qqqq.aspx

http://www.fulldisclosure.com/dividend.asp?month=20090603&day=20090603&date=20090603&client=cb

This one you’ll need to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to see everything

http://www.fulldisclosure.com/company.asp?ticker=BAC&coid=71595&client=cb


----------



## mfd (Apr 3, 2009)

daveking said:


> I am a Google Spreadsheet and Google Finance fan.
> 
> For example, to get the latest Apple Inc. stock price you type this in the google spreadsheet cell:
> 
> ...


Just to add to this. Last I remember there is no way to tie a symbol with a specific index. So if you have a symbol on the TSX for companyA and a symbol on the S&P 500 for companyB then by default google docs will take the S&P 500 companyB


----------



## stinsont (May 29, 2009)

daveking said:


> I am a Google Spreadsheet and Google Finance fan.
> 
> For example, to get the latest Apple Inc. stock price you type this in the google spreadsheet cell:
> 
> ...


How do I get the latest stock prices into a MS spreadsheet rather than a Google spreadsheet?


----------



## mfd (Apr 3, 2009)

stinsont said:


> How do I get the latest stock prices into a MS spreadsheet rather than a Google spreadsheet?



You can't. This is only a function that works within google docs. 

However if you have excel 2007 you can import the quote table from yahoo finance. Here is how you import from the web http://www.nirmaltv.com/2008/10/23/how-to-import-html-tables-to-excel-sheet/ . The information will refresh automatically


----------



## mfd (Apr 3, 2009)

Actually you can import data with excel 2000 as well.

Here is a template that does it. It uses MSN money instead of Yahoo to do the import http://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/excel-stock-quotes.html


----------



## stinsont (May 29, 2009)

what I really want to be able to do is have my spreadsheet I use to track my stocks (average price, units etc) auto update with the current stock price. Does anyone do this using Excel? 

Would be interested to see how others track stocks, dividends, capital gains etc...


----------



## mfd (Apr 3, 2009)

I use Quick tax tracker....this software is more gear to tracking stocks for tax purposes (ie capital gains, loss, average price, costs, dividends, etc). 

I really couldn't find anything in excel that did that and I was having a problem developing on on my own


There is another thread here  that discusses software that you might be interested.


----------



## joes_k (Apr 29, 2009)

This site has a financial spreadsheet for just about everything.

Including a download of stock data from yahoo into excel. 

http://www.gummy-stuff.org/


----------



## Preet (Apr 3, 2009)

stinsont said:


> what I really want to be able to do is have my spreadsheet I use to track my stocks (average price, units etc) auto update with the current stock price. Does anyone do this using Excel?
> 
> Would be interested to see how others track stocks, dividends, capital gains etc...


I'm also a fan of Googledocs for this, autoupdates every 5 minutes. See an example I just published to track a hypothetical strategy.


----------



## leslie (May 25, 2009)

stinsont said:


> what I really want to be able to do is ...


I find all the portfolio tracking systems out there lose the 'history' that provides relevance. The following excel97 file keeps a record each time you decide (month end) to freeze its value. The current stock prices on the main page are look-up'd from a back page. It takes only a few seconds to import the data to that back page using just basic Select-copy-pasteSpecial-data.

Where you get the data is up to you. The spreadsheet has the backup page formatted to use GlobeInvest's Stocklist. But you can edit that page and edit the look-up command on the front page.

http://members.shaw.ca/retailinvestor/Portfolio.xls
http://members.shaw.ca/retailinvestor/tracking.html


----------

