Updating Prices

[tfc]

Please can anyone tell me what is a sensible quote server in Fund Manager for prices of UK stocks, bonds and funds?

I mean something which actually contains a good range of the instruments in the UK market, and which supplies daily quotes reliably. I would regard it as extra useful if it provided historical quotes.

I am trying to evaluate Fund Manager, and I (naturally) started off using UK Yahoo, but I find that the service doesn't update regularly. Some items have prices which are 3 days out of date, others are 10 days out of date. (I have confirmed this by looking up the instruments on the actual web site, so it's not a Fund Manager download problem.) I also had some difficulty in working out which code to use. On the web pages it accepts the ISIN code, but the price updates seem to need the Symbol, which you get off the Yahoo page.

I know that MS Money (from uk.moneycentral.msn.com) provides daily prices, but it wan't possible to use that as Fund Manager doesn't seem to allow access to that service.

I tried Bloomberg, and that seems to provide daily updates (after I changed all the codes), but I am not sure whether it provides a full range of UK instruments, as it is a US based web site. Also, there is the problem with the names/codes it uses. For example, 'Invesco Perpetual High Income' (a very popular UK fund) has 4 different codes. OK, I know the real things have income and accumulator units, but there is no indication which 2 out of the 4 on Bloomberg, are the relevant items. They are not simple duplicates, they all have different prices.

If I can make a comment, the whole area of price updates seem to me to be very important, and can really make, or not make, a useful portfolio product. In particular, if the interface is not relatively straight forward it will put off new users.

I do understand that each provider does different things, and unfortunately changes their coding and methods from time to time. That's why I am surprised that Fund Manager does not seem to allow any access to the parameters of the price update process. Instead, I understand everything is hidden away in a .DLL file. This is particulary unfortunate in the case of UK investors as I supect it might only need a simple change to a URL to make the updates effective in some cases e.g. as with the MS Money data.

Thanks


Tony

[Mark]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for evaluating Fund Manager.

I don't have anything to offer on what server is best for UK holdings. I can just say that we support any of the servers listed here:

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

which it sounds like you've already seen, and become familiar with. Probably the best thing to do is visit these sites with your browser, to see if they offer the quotes you need, and to figure out what symbol is required.

Also, it is not necessary to only use 1 server. If some quotes are on a different server, you can override this on a per-investment basis under "Investment Properties... / Internet Retrieve".

It would be great to be able to allow the user to program their own quote server. This is not so straight-forward though. There is a lot more than just the URL to edit. That is the easiest part. The main issue is that each server returns the data in a different format, which requires custom parsing on a per-server basis. This functionality would be very difficult to provide in a generic manner to the end user. We try to support as many different servers as necessary to support the widest number of users/exchanges. The quote module is a separate DLL, which can be updated when new servers are added, or existing servers updated. If you have a suggestion for another quote server, please let us know. We can consider adding support for it in a future version.