Server for Municipal Bond Prices

[George B]

What server should I be using for municipal bond prices. I have been trying FINRA Bonds but I do not get prices. I used to use cxs.marketwatch.com but it is not an option any more.

Thanks

George

[Mark]

Hi George,

I'm not sure. Does the FINRA website show your quote? If so, can you give me an example CUSIP to look up? Did you enter the "Ticker" into Fund Manager for the symbol? See the "Details" link next to the Finra - Bonds quote server here for details:

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

I'm not sure the Finra - Bonds website will work with municipal bonds, it does work with corporate bonds.

[aviator]

Hi Mark,
Today I encountered a few errors while attempting a Price History retrieve. A couple of comments/observations:

1) I am using 12.7, professional version, quote module 450, transaction module 180.

2) This problem *appears* to be related to downloading prices for individual municipal bonds from finance.yahoo.com. I haven't changed the properties of any of these bonds since they were bought years ago. Perhaps this is a problem introduced with a newer version of the quote module?

3) The price retrieval takes inordinately long... much longer than in the past. I think each municipal bond is timing out (I own several), which might explain the long retrieval times.

4) I've attached two screen prints of the error messages I'm getting. I'm afraid they're meaningless to me (don't know what Winlet Error Code 12002 means), perhaps it means something to you.

WSAE12002.PNG (2.11 KiB) Viewed 3906 times

WinlnetErrorCode.PNG (5.18 KiB) Viewed 3906 times

[Mark]

Hi aviator,

I see the same problem here. It looks to be a problem with the Yahoo site. Even if you go to finance.yahoo.com with your web browser, and try to look up any quote, it just times out with no results. I suspect it is a temporary problem that they should hopefully get back up and running soon.

[aviator]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the quick reply, as usual.

Interesting that some quotes came down normally, but others timed out, with all my investments pulling from Yahoo's servers. It might be coincidence that mine timed out on the muni bonds because I own quite a few...

After doing the Price History retrieve and downloading the latest transactions, my portfolio value matches my broker to the penny. I would have expected a different value for those that timed out. Oh well, all's well that ends well. Thanks for your help.

[George B]

Hi George,

I'm not sure. Does the FINRA website show your quote? If so, can you give me an example CUSIP to look up? Did you enter the "Ticker" into Fund Manager for the symbol? See the "Details" link next to the Finra - Bonds quote server here for details:

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

I'm not sure the Finra - Bonds website will work with municipal bonds, it does work with corporate bonds.

Thanks for your reply Mark

I went to to the FINRA site and searched and both came up. I have the CUSIP in the symbol field and the CUSIP field.

Here is the CUSIP for one of the bonds 613549GV0 This is a Montgomery County Ohio bond.

George

[Mark]

Hi George,

You need to record what Finra calls the "Ticker" as your symbol in Fund Manager. Look in the URL at the top of your web browser, and you can see the ticker value for this muni is:

M6774584564699

This is the value in the URL, after the "ticker=", as shown here:

http://finra-markets.morningstar.com/Bo ... 4584564699

Record M6774584564699 as your symbol in Fund Manager, and then you can retrieve it. I tested it here, and it retrieved properly.

[George B]

Thanks Mark.

[SteveP]

I've followed the instructions in this post and indeed I can get FM to update prices on muni bonds using the ticker I fish off the FINRA url. My question is my bonds were entered into FM as a transaction download from Charles Schwab which inserted a number, not a CUSIP or the ticker described here, into the symbol field. My question is if I replace this mystery number with the FINRA ticker, is it going to do anything to FM's ability to keep track of or associate Schwab transactions with these bonds with the new FINRA ticker. I give an example below. One reason I'm asking is that it's a lot of work to get these tickers and I don't want to have to undo everything.

CUSIP: 13063BQ70
FINRA ticker: M929391000138
Schwab mystery number: 5529026

[Mark]

Hi SteveP,

You can change the symbol, and not affect your ability to retrieve transactions or reconcile with Schwab. The transaction retrieve and reconcile feature is based off CUSIP, so the symbol does not matter for that feature. You can change the symbol to whatever you need for price retrieve purposes. Also, retrieving transactions updates the prices from your broker, so if you don't want to mess with the symbol, you could just retrieve transactions to get updated pricing.