Best Source of Canadian Price/History Servers?

[Ron AKA]

I have got all my portfolio/transaction data entered, and had selected Google as my price source for current and historical data. A manual test looked promising, but now I have issues.

1. First the current price retrieval does work with one somewhat minor issue. The prices all look good for my ETF and all mutual funds but one. It is an international fund (RBF559), and it seems the returned price is one day older than the current date. Perhaps a timing problem with when Google gathers the prices and they are one day behind.

2. The larger issue is that the historical price retrieval does not seem to work at all. When I do a request for all historical prices I don't even get a dialog box to enter the date range. However, if I do a request for an individual investment, I get the dialog box, but still no data returned. I tried the Google Historical server as well, but still no luck.

Unless I am missing something, it seems to me that one is forced to use the same server for current and historical pricing. The prefix or suffix addition for Canadian securities has to be the same for current and historical, and each server seems to use something different.

Can anyone suggest a better server for Canadian securities (stocks, ETF's, mutual funds)? Am I correct in assuming I would have to go into every investment in every portfolio and change the symbol to match a new server with a different symbol convention?

[Ron AKA]

I managed to stumble on a potential solution to my issues.

1. Morningstar.ca returns the up to date pricing for the one International Fund I was having a problem with and the rest. But it uncovered another issue. It seems Morningstar reports on the last Ask Price of each day, while my TD WebBroker reports on the last Bid Price for long positions. So, I end up with a bid spread discrepancy between Fund Manager Investment values and my WebBroker reports.

2. Morningstar does not return historical pricing, but Google (Historical Mutuals) does for mutuals, stocks, and ETFs. The problem is that Morningstar uses different symbols than Google. I eventually stumbled on the Advanced Options dialog box when you open an individual Investment Properties, Internet Retrieve tab. It has an option to input an alternate symbol for the investment when the Historical Server is used. Very cumbersome to input it as you have to open every Investment in every sub Portfolio to do the entry, but I did it. Have not had a chance to test it, as all my prices are up to date, but it seems to have potential as a solution. Will let my daily updates slide for a couple of days, and then try the Historic update to see if it works.

Canada Stockwatch is a potential solution for this problem. The symbol for stocks and ETFs is just a prefix of "TSE:". However the symbol they use for Canadian mutual funds is a real mystery, and unless you are a member they don't let you far enough into their site to figure it out. Yahoo (Historical) only works for stocks and ETFs.

The ultimate perfect solution seems to be somewhat elusive!

[Djobydjoba]

Hi,

Mark will answer better than me, but:

However the symbol they use for Canadian mutual funds is a real mystery

Have you tried to search with this page? https://www.stockwatch.com/Quote/Search.aspx

There is no ultimate perfect solution with a single quote server, as no quote server is exhaustive for all investment types. We have to search (and use) the several quote servers available. Yes, it can be some work (it is). I think Google is exhaustive with ETFs, but sometimes they can be tricky to find (often helpful to search with the ETF code from the issuer). For mutual funds, in some case it may not be possible to find a quote server with historical prices available. At least, it may be possible to import once the historical prices from another source (from the issuer website for example), then set an automatic retrieve each day for the current price (with Morningstar quote server for example).

Regards.

[Ron AKA]

Hi,

Mark will answer better than me, but:

However the symbol they use for Canadian mutual funds is a real mystery

Have you tried to search with this page? https://www.stockwatch.com/Quote/Search.aspx

There is no ultimate perfect solution with a single quote server, as no quote server is exhaustive for all investment types. We have to search (and use) the several quote servers available. Yes, it can be some work (it is). I think Google is exhaustive with ETFs, but sometimes they can be tricky to find (often helpful to search with the ETF code from the issuer). For mutual funds, in some case it may not be possible to find a quote server with historical prices available. At least, it may be possible to import once the historical prices from another source (from the issuer website for example), then set an automatic retrieve each day for the current price (with Morningstar quote server for example).

Regards.

Yes, I have spent a lot of time on that page. I believe it does give you the format they use for Canadian Mutual Funds. I think the correct format is F:GGG*FFF. The FFF is the hard part. At this link, you can find some potential options for the GGG part, but not the individual fund part. I think once you narrowed it down to the right fund company and did a search you would find the individual funds. However that seems to be a members of Stockwatch only search.

https://www.stockwatch.com/Fund/Search.aspx

[Djobydjoba]

You can search with the mutual fund name, or a part of it, in the fields at the top of the page, and the symbol is returned:

20171126-dim.15h56-01.png (42.71 KiB) Viewed 2739 times

Have you tried?

[Ron AKA]

You can search with the mutual fund name, or a part of it, in the fields at the top of the page, and the symbol is returned:
Have you tried?

Thank you. I hadn't found that search, and it does work. I found the symbols of interest with a bit of hunting around. However, one international fund I have, RBF559 (RIT*IRI) has the same issue as the Google current price database. It is one day out of date. So, I guess I will stay with Morningstar.ca for the current prices. As I said before, the prefect solution seems elusive! But, thanks for the help though.