Unable to access UK Fund Prices

[GordonBruce]

I have recently downloaded the evaluation copy of FM. It looks as though it may meet my needs. I am having difficulty however with accessing UK Fund prices for the investments below.

For the first 14 items(Exchange Traded Funds) I can access Yahoo UK and Ireland from within FM with the ISIN reference but cannot see the symbols there for the last 10 items(Pension Funds) even when I access Yahoo UK and Ireland directly.

I can access Financial Times service for all of the items using the ISIN reference but Financial Times is not supported by FM.

I would appreciate any advice you can give me so that I can download all of the prices automatically.

Thanks in advance.

Gordon Bruce
ISIN FUND
GB0000150150.L HSBC Japan Index Ret Inc
GB0000150374.L HSBC Japan Index Ret Acc
GB00B02L5M76.L JPM Europe Dynamic Ex UK A Acc
GB00B1JFB215.L JPM Europe Dynamic Ex UK A Inc
GB00B1H05049.L M&G Optimal Income A Inc GBP
GB00B1H05155.L M&G Optimal Income A Acc GBP
GB0033828020.L M&G Strategic Corp Bd A Inc GBP
GB0033828137.L M&G Strategic Corp Bd A Acc GBP
GB00B00ZJK75.L Stan Life Inv Gbl Idx Lkd Bd R Acc
GB00B00ZJM99.L Stan Life Inv Gbl Idx Lkd Bd R Inc
GB0000937093.L Stan Life Inv Higher Income R Inc
GB0000938844.L Stan Life Inv Higher Income R Acc
GB0004331129.L Stan Life Inv UK Gilt Ret Inc
GB0004328745.L Stan Life Inv UK Gilt Ret Acc

GB00B4MV6F53.L AXA Wealth Aberdeen Asia PaciPn S4
GB00B4K4HN14.L AXA Wealth BlackUK AbsAl Pn S4
GB00B3DBGS09.L AXA Wealth First St As PaLdrPn S4
GB00B3DBGT16.L AXA Wealth FirStGlEMktsLdrsPn S4
GB00B3DBJQ99.L AXA Wealth M&G Recovery Pn S4
GB00B3DBJV43.L AXA Wealth Ma CurrFNr Pn S4
GB00B3DBKJ95.L AXA Wealth Newton IntrnBdPn S4
GB00B3DBLN07.L AXA Wealth Thndles Prop Pn S4
GB00B3DBLP21.L AXA Wealth ThreadneUKEqIncPn S4
GB00B4KDC889.L AXA Wealth InsiAbsUKEMtNePn S4
GB00B3DBFW79.L AXA Wealth Money Market Pn S4

[Mark]

Hi GordonBruce,

Have you tried the "MSN" quote server? It offers UK Fund Price updates. For some background on what symbols to use, see this thread:

viewtopic.php?t=932

[GordonBruce]

Mark, many thanks for your prompt reply. It was very helpful.
I am now able to download current prices (but not price history) for all of the "non-AXA Wealth" funds using MSN. I can't get current prices or price history for the AXA Wealth funds (UK Pension Funds) although I tried the following servers-

Bloomberg
Bloomberg historical
MSN
MSN historical
Yahoo
Yahoo Historical
Yahoo - UK&Ireland

I followed the information you provided in the link to related posts, particularly related to symbol conventions.

For the AXA Wealth funds, prices are available at-

Financial Times
Morningstar
FE Trustnet

Is there anything else you can suggest?

Thanks and regards
Gordon

[Mark]

Hi Gordon,

If the quotes aren't on any of our current quote servers you won't be able to "retrieve" the prices. If you've found another site that offers these quotes, you can see if they make them available in any sort of downloadable format, like a .CSV file, which you could then "import". If that is not available, then you would need to manually update these prices. We can consider adding support for new quote servers in a future update.

[GordonBruce]

Thanks again, Mark.

For the AXA Wealth Funds, I'll follow the option of updating prices manually for the time being. As you say, hopefully this type of fund can be handled by adding quote servers in a future release!

For the non-AXA funds, it suprises me that, although I can successfully retrieve current quotes from MSN, I cannot retrieve price history for the same investments from MSN Historical. Does this make sense to you? If it does not, I would like to eliminate the possibility of error on my part. Anything you can suggest to help with this would be very welcome.

Thanks and regards
Gordon

[Mark]

Hi Gordon,

The MSN server does offer only current prices for some symbols. One way to check is with your web browser. Look up the symbol on MSN, and click the "Historical Prices" link on the left menu. In some cases it will report historical prices aren't available. For example, I checked your first non-AXA example:

GB:GB000015015

and it had a current quote, but no historical prices...

[GordonBruce]

Mark,

I tried MSN for all of the non-AXA funds with the same result.

Thanks for all your advice.

Regards
Gordon

[GordonBruce]

Mark, how feasable would it be to create a generic quote import option? Are there particular programming challenges in doing this?

I have been looking at the following site which offers a free Excel add-in-

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/smf_addin/


Regards
Gordon

[Mark]

Hi Gordon,

There is already a generic price import feature. See "File / Import / Prices / Generic...". Is this what you're looking for?

Maybe you are looking for a user-definable quote server feature? This would be quite difficult, as most servers don't have any sort of standardized format for providing the quotes.

[GordonBruce]

Mark, it's the second - the ability for a user to define price information to retrieve from a quote server.

In the link I provided in my last message, although the syntax looked quite daunting to me, I was able to receive into Excel current price information using the parameters-

URL of the investment web page
Search term for a text string on the webpage of the data label required (something like "Price", "Bid", "Offer", "NAV" depending on the layout of the particular web page)
An offset to an adjacent field containing the actual price.

If that capability could be provided it might help avoid you having to set up specific server information for each price source and would have the effect of transferring the maintenance of those links to the user. It's an opportunity to provide a universal solution to an important issue.

Thanks and regards
Gordon

[Mark]

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for the feedback. I agree that would be nice for users to be able to define their own quote servers. In some cases (like from Yahoo) this can be not too bad since they download in simple formats, like CSV, but in most cases the parsing can be rather complex. I suspect in these cases we'd need to provide some templates/instructions to use a quote server, and it would be simpler to just have built-in support so the end user doesn't have to try and program in these instructions.

[GordonBruce]

I see. Thanks again for your input, Mark.

Regards
Gordon