UK Unit Trust Prices

[Sterling Silver]

I am currently running a trial of Fund Manager. The programme appears ideal for my needs apart from being unable to download UK Unit trust prices. Yahoo UK is hopeless, it doesn't recognise any of the symbols that I've tried. For example GB0033947663GBP should retrieve "Invesco Perpetual Distribution Inc Gross" not a chance. It doesn't even recognise its own symbology. However, moneycentral.msn.com recognises this symbol, GB:GB003394766, for the above fund but won't retrieve the daily price.
Are there any UK users of Fund Manager who have successfully retrieved Unit Trust prices?

[Mark]

Hello Sterling Silver,

I don't know where you can find these quotes, but have you tried Bloomberg? For links to all of our supported servers, see:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/intrtv.html

[Sterling Silver]

Hi Mark

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I had previously explored most of the supported servers but without luck. Yahoo UK is fine for standard stocks, ETF's and Investment trusts etc. In the past I've used Microsoft Money and it would retrieve Unit trust prices from "http://money.uk.msn.com/". Is there any possibility that you could support the MSN server.

Thanks

[Mark]

Hi Sterling Silver,

Thanks for the quote server suggestion. We can take a look at adding this one in the future. If it offers quotes not available on other servers, that makes it more attractive to add.

[Gally]

I have been using fund manager for a couple of years with no problems downloading from Yahoo UK&I unitl it stopped working before Christmas. So I think we will have to find another free source of data and hope mark can provide an interface ot it.

Your suggestion of MSN is OK providing we have an interface.

So Mark please have a look into this or we are all up the creek without a paddle.

Thanks

[Mark]

Hi Gally,

Have you taken a look at that suggested UK MSN server? Does it offer the quotes you need that aren't available on Yahoo UK? Can you give me a couple example ticker symbols that you can get on this new server, but not on Yahoo UK?

[Sterling Silver]

Here is the response that I recieved from Yahoo regarding lack of price downloads:

Hello Peter,

Thanks for writing to Yahoo! UK Customer Care.

Thank you for bringing this error to my attention. Our engineering and production staffs for Yahoo! Finance have already been alerted. While we cannot, at this time, give you a timeline for the resolution of this error, rest assured that we will endeavour to have a solution as soon as we can.

I apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Please feel free to email me again with any further comments or questions.

Regards,

Alice
Customer Care - Yahoo! UK & Ireland

[Mark]

Hi Sterling Silver,

That sounds promising, thanks for posting the update.

[John Davies]

Hi Mark:

Can I add my name to the list asking for some sort of solution?

Like Gally, I've used Yahoo UK for years to get prices into FM and found that, although it still works for UK stock prices, it suddenly stopped providing UK fund prices in November. For example
"Jupiter UK Special Situations Inc", Symbol: GB0004777347GBP, ISIN: GB0004777347.

I couldn't get the money.uk.msn.com site to recognise the words "Jupiter", or "special" in its quote server. Eventually I found the funds page and drilled down to the fund - which clicked me through to Hargreaves Lansdown's site at http://www.h-l.co.uk/funds/fund-discoun ... Override=1. Don't know if this is of any help.

I'm not confident about Yahoo UK's response to Sterling Silver. I had a similar exchange two years ago when all the Standard Life funds suddenly dropped off Yahoo. I've had to enter their prices manually ever since then.

Anything you can do to get Fund Manager working with Yahoo UK again would be gratefully received.

Regards
John

[Mark]

Hi John,

I was able to find your quote on moneycentral.msn.com. It uses the symbol of:

GB:GB000477734

I followed Sterling Silver's approach, and took the Yahoo symbol, minus the leading GB: and minus the trailing <#>GBP to get the MSN symbol.

Unfortunately, the current MSN (Historical) server cannot access this symbol. The server reports that their database does not have this symbol in their historical price database. Sounds like adding support for a new server of just MSN to get current quotes would help out here. We'll look into this...

[John Davies]

Mark:

Good man!

Regards
John

[Mark]

We've just released version 414 of the quote module, to add support for a new "MSN" server. This new quote server can retrieve these UK unit trust quotes (plus a lot more). Read more about it here:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/foru ... =3610#3610

[John Davies]

Thanks Mark, FM is successfully retrieving quotes for about half of my funds via your new MSN feed. I couldn't find the remainder - they are in pension fund funds, so may not be publicly tradeable.

FYI, I took Yahoo UK's reference, removed the GBP at the end AND THE FINAL DIGIT, and put GBP: at the beginning. That seemed to work.

Thanks again!

Regards
John

[Gally]

I checked out GB0003460507 F&C high income on the MSN.com server and whilst it returns an ISIN response of the form GB:GB0003460507 you need to click this to retreive a quote.

On the MSN UK server the ISIN get quote only returns a fund name and ISIN but you have to click this to retreive a quote.

None of your interfaces work for UK funds and I guess this affects your every UK customer or investor. UK quotes are available on MSN. They were available on Yahoo but stopped working last November.

So in conclusion until you can provide us with an interface for Uk fund price update we are stuck with having to manually update data. NOT good news.

[Mark]

Hi Gally,

You can retrieve UK fund prices from the MSN server. For example, to retrieve the quote you mentioned (F&C High Income), you would use the symbol:

GB:GB000346050

Note, the symbol is different than it was on Yahoo. For MSN, you have to add a "GB:" in front of the Yahoo symbol, and you also have to remove the last digit, plus "GBP". So, on Yahoo, if the symbol was:

GB0003460507GBP

to retrieve from MSN, you would change this to:

GB:GB000346050

I just now test retrieved GB:GB000346050 and it updated in Fund Manager properly, and also displays on the MSN site.