Using ISIN numbers

[richard]

Mark,

I've been observing the mess (unfortunately that's the only thing I can call it) due to your having to drop Bloomberg. It's caused me to retrograde back to 2016p5. I'm very far from the only one that has that problem.

A solution was suggested by Djobydjoba, this is the same one I suggested to you a couple of years ago, to use the ISIN numbers from the Boursorama site. At the time you said it would be very difficult for technical reasons. If we could find a source of to use as symbols this would take of virtually all the European problem such with things in Luxembourg (which is currently on Bloomberg) but also other things which Bloomberg doesn't cover (bonds, special purchases, ...).

This why I think that basically I think Djobydjoba, is right. ISIN numbers cover all the European stocks, including Luxembourg Mutual funds, French and other European bonds, ...

Boursorama is NOT responsible for generating the ISIN codes; They are just a user of them.

https://www.isin.org/isin/

Mark, with your approval I could check around to see what sites use (I think all of them here) and to try and find out where they originate from. Perhaps there is an "original website". I could check around here in France, call a few people and see what I can find out.

I think that ISIN numbers could turn out almost as complete as Bloomberg, combined with Yahoo we'd might be as good as gold.
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Question:

What do I risk not upgrading and continue using Bloomberg ?

Richard (from Paris)

[Mark]

Hi Richard,

I may not have followed your question, but we'd be happy to be able to use ISIN to identify a quote. Unfortunately, in order to request a quote from a particular quote server we have to provide whatever that quote server uses. If there is a good site that offers free quotes based off ISIN, and it offers quotes not available on any of our other quote serves we will seriously consider adding support for it.

If you don't update the quote module, you won't get any of the fixes, such as the recent fixes for the Yahoo server.

Are there some quotes that you can get from Bloomberg, that you're not able to retrieve from any of our other currently supported servers?

[richard]

Mark,

The main thing to be said about ISIN, is that it is an international standard agreed up on by everyone and therefore symbol independent from the various others such as Bloomberg, Yahoo, ....

The main thing, as you said, is to find is a Web server for quotes that's indexed by ISIN number.

One such server is that of Boursorama, I believe that it can also be indexed by Yahoo symbols. It's access by ISIN number seems to be as complete as Bloomberg; it doesn't however have historical quotes.

I'll try and find other servers that can also reference ISIN numbers. If there is any own reading this that knows of any, could you please post them.

You asked in your reply to my post: Are there some quotes that you can get from Bloomberg, that you're not able to retrieve from any of our other currently supported servers?

Undoubtedly, the problem being is that I don't know how to look them up on the other servers. Let me give you a few examples.
aetja2e:lx (LU0476876759), memeupr:lx, FOEBSEC:LX (LU0823399810), BNPDYNC:FP (fr0010076547)
Yahoo seems to recognize the last ISIN number if I tack on a ".pa" to it; it does not recognize however recognize any of the other examples in the above line

What's also important, is that I also have a number of ISIN numbers that I can't find on Bloomberg.
L12015089007, fr0011832237, FR0010186304, FR0010520882
and Yahoo doesn't know them either.

Believe me when I say that I can give you a lot more.

Can you find any of the above on Quandl ? I could not.

Most of what I am worried about are mutual funds, warrants, newly issued stocks as dividends or buying rights. All there have ISIN numbers and can't be found elsewhere.

So far, and by far the best ISIN server I know is at www.boursorama.com

I will see if I can find others, but I believe that it is more complete then any of the other servers on your current list.
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A bit off topic, you also said

"If you don't update the quote module, you won't get any of the fixes, such as the recent fixes for the Yahoo server.

For the moment I'm not to worried, staying with Bloomberg as long as I can seems to me to be more important.

Richard (from Paris)

[richard]

Mark,

An after thought, Boursorama also works quite well for US stocks. One can type in

TSCO

and get as a return

TRACTOR SUPPLY
US8923561067 TSCO

The stock symbol and the unique ISIN code, or one can simply enter the ISIN number, both work to do the search.

Richard (from Paris)

[Mark]

Hi Richard,

Thanks. I took a look, and although you can search by ISIN, it appears the URL to access the actual quote always uses the symbol. For example:

http://www.boursorama.com/cours.phtml?symbole=TSCO

I also reviewed their Terms Of Service, and they have this in there (translated to English):

It is forbidden to use any automatic recovery means (computer program) to collect data from Boursorama

I have sent them an email, asking for clarification/permission to add them as a quote server, explaining how Fund Manager will work. We'll see if they reply, and whether they provide permission or not.