MSN unit price retrieval problem?

[John Davies]

Is there a problem with MSN unit price retrieve?
No unit price retrieval for the last two weeks – worked for years before this. Gives error message “One or more servers were unable to retrieve any prices”. No problem with stocks retrieved via Yahoo UK, but all unit prices retrieved via MSN aren’t working.
I’ve checked your latest status page (last updated 10th June!), and MSN is showing as working. I have the latest retrieval module (429).

So I went on to MSN to check the symbols, and found that they seem to have added a further digit to the end of the symbol, eg
Inv Perp Euro Equity Acc, symbol GB:GB003302800 has become GB:GB0033028001
Fidelity American Acc, symbol GB:GB000386517 has become GB:GB0003865176
Henderson Global Tech, symbol GB:GB0007698847 has become GB:GB0007698847
…plus similar six others.

I’ve made these changes to the symbols, but FM (ver 10.9) still doesn’t seem to retrieve the prices. This time it doesn’t give the error message “One or more servers were unable to retrieve any prices”, but no new price data is retrieved – FM still shows the latest price from 8 Aug. In fact I've just checked all 9 unit prices on MSN and MSN states that they ALL have "last trade: 8 Aug". I find this very odd, that all 9 from different investment houses have exactly the same last trade date, over two weeks ago.
Further info: I've checked Fidelity's own web site for the price of the American unit, and it's different to what MSN's web site is reporting. MSN: 18.75 (8 Aug); Fidelity: 18.56 (24 Aug).

Any thoughts?

[Mark]

Hi John Davies,

It appears MSN hasn't updated these prices since 8/8/12. If you view one of these quotes using your browser, you can see it shows the last NAV update date right below the "Details" section. This happened previously this year, where they stopped getting updates for a while. You might consider looking into using Bloomberg instead. See this thread:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2160

[John Davies]

Hi Mark:

Thanks - I followed your advice and switched to Bloomberg. As stated in the other thread, it's time-consuming identifying the exact Bloomberg ref no for each unit. Why oh why don't fund managers quote ISIN, SEDOL and Bloomberg refs on annual fund statements!

I'll see if Bloomberg is more reliable than MSN.

Thanks again for the tip.

John

[dlapish]

I would really appreciate it if John or anyone could confirm if Bloomberg is still working and if so post a step-by-step guide to retrieving unit trust prices. I think the FM software is in a class of its own but the difficulty in being able to download UK unit trust prices significantly reduces its usability for me. Thanks again, David.

[Mark]

Hi David,

Yes, Bloomberg still works. You just need to figure out what symbol they use for your investment. To do this, use your web browser, and go to:

http://www.bloomberg.com/

In the search box, type in the name or part of the name, until you find your investment. Once you determine the symbol, record this in your Fund Manager investment.

To make sure you are retrieving from Bloomberg, you can either set it as your global default server under "Options / Internet Settings..." or you can assign it on a per-investment basis under "Investment Properties... / Internet Retrieve".