UK stocks updates
Tim Hawkes
via web
Hi,
I moved from Quicken when the UK stock updating ended, and for a year or so Money dance has provided what I am looking for. I can live with the incorrect valuation of Euro stocks ( as I only have 1 and I am aware of the problem), but since mid December some stocks update, some don't. This is far worse than either working or not working!
looking at the console output I am getting 404 not found errors
for some stocks.
When I go to yahooo.com those stocks are found OK?
What is going on?
Any progress on using a UK-centric site for stock update, or at least have the option for it.?
Looks to me as Moneydance is going the way of Quicken, stuff the UK, it is not worth it!
I hope my cynicism is unfounded.
Tim
2 Posted by Brian Adler on 08 Apr, 2010 02:11 AM
Tim,
I apologize that you have not heard from us before now. It is not an indication of lack of commitment to users in the UK. We do have plans to allow for stocks price updates from other sites including sites in the UK such as http://yahoo.co.uk/. I don't have a solution for you before this improvement is implemented, but it is something that we are working on.
Sincerely,
Brian Adler
Moneydance Support
3 Posted by Patrick Litton on 06 Sep, 2010 09:04 PM
Brian
As a UK user, I too am interested in knowing if there is any update on this: the US Yahoo site does not include most UK funds that are included on the UK Yahoo site. Entering data by hand is painful and I cannot get the Python script written to allow CSV file updates to work either - probably because I am not that technologically minded.
Any update on when you think it might be ready gratefully recieved
Patrick
Support Staff 4 Posted by Ben Spencer on 11 Sep, 2010 03:57 PM
One of the Moneydance software engineers is writing the new extension as an open source project. It is very nearly finished. You can try our the beta by downloading it from his website:
http://www.mennesoft.com/yahooqt/
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Suppor
5 Posted by Tim Hawkes on 14 Sep, 2010 09:05 PM
Great!
Now I am a millionare again!!!!
We need to sort out once and for all whether stock prices are in PENCE or POUNDS.
My portfolio is now worth 100 times what is was before!!!!!!!
It will be another weeks worth of manually editing (AGAIN) to get this back to how it was!!
Apart from that - not bad
Tim
-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Spencer [mailto:***@tenderapp.com]
Sent: 11 September 2010 17:00
To: ***@gmail.com
Subject: Re: UK stocks updates [Questions]
Support Staff 6 Posted by Tom Freeman on 15 Sep, 2010 06:02 PM
Tim,
If you scroll the last page of this discussion:http://help.infinitekind.com/discussions/problems/282-uk-fund, you will see the extension developer's thoughts on his build.
I want to acknowledge the hassle of having to change over investment portfolios from pence to pounds. With the new user interface of the extension allowing the choice of which web site to find the data, this should be the final set up. This assumes that Yahoo and Google will stay consistent. If the menu choice expands you will have the option of which site maintains how you have the securities listed.
Tom
7 Posted by Tim Hawkes on 15 Sep, 2010 09:36 PM
Thanks Tom,
A case of RTFM!
I'm now successfully updating in pence now.
Just waiting for UK funds, then everything will be just right.
Tim
8 Posted by Neville Crook on 24 Sep, 2010 01:09 PM
Tim
UK fund prices are available using the MD 'Quotes and Exchange Rate Download extension. I have been using it for a few months now. I have the Beta5 version and the only slight problem is that the Yahoo UK site prices are about three days late so by Tuesday I usually get Fridays price.
Please note that the Historical prices download does not work only the current price. This is because Yahoo do not store historical prices, neither do Google. Be sure on the download page to tick the box 'save current price as historical' and you will gradually build up 'future' historical prices.
You need to use the right Ticker Symbol such as GB0004792684 for Jupiter High Income.
I have been trying to add historical prices from before I had MD but the only way so far has been to download CSV or other files from the Fund Manager and import. Works very well with Invesco but you need to download to Excel (CSV and add High and Low columns (save as Close) and set Vol to zero to match what MD is looking for in the import.
Regards
Neville
9 Posted by Jason on 24 Feb, 2011 11:55 AM
Hi - I have actually got the prices for UK stock to work. I changed from Yahoo UK to Yahoo USA and all was well.
Please include the functionality for UK Mutual Funds, it is very usful to myself and countless others that use or are looking to purchase MD.
Thanks.
Support Staff 10 Posted by Ben Spencer on 24 Feb, 2011 07:54 PM
I am afraid that yahoo are nolonger providing quotes and histories as a download for UK mutual funds. We are considering different price providers and at this time it is not possible to obtain prices for these types of securities with Moneydance.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
11 Posted by Chris Elliott on 12 Mar, 2011 11:47 AM
When is this going to be fixed????
I have been using MoneyDance for about a year and for most things it is a good piece of software with a good working layout but the continual prevarication on this issue by support staff is rapidly turning me off to the software. I have recently been testing Acemoney and Banktree as replacements for Moneydance and while I prefer the layout of Moneydance to these other products they both deal with fund downloading for UK simply and easily offereing multiple data sources.
Please give us a definitive answer -will it be fixed or not and if it will be fixed when.
12 Posted by Neville Crook on 13 Mar, 2011 11:52 AM
Chris
I am also waiting patiently (for the moment) for this to be solved. As I have said before how come AceMoney and Banktree can download UK fund prices but not MD. It seems that Bloomberg prices are available for these funds and all that is needed is the translation to MD's format.
I am still experimenting with AceMoney and Banktree but having transferred from Quicken about 12 months ago I am reluctant to change again so soon with all that that entails. However I have many different UK funds and manually updating is a real pain. MD need to solve this or many UK users will leave.
Regards
Neville
13 Posted by Chris Elliott on 15 Mar, 2011 08:17 PM
Looks like this has been a common problem with Yahoo and UK funds. See:
http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=932&po...
Maybe someone at moneydance could pick this up and add MSN fund lookup to the downloader.
Support Staff 14 Posted by Tom Freeman on 21 Mar, 2011 01:30 PM
I went to the MSN Money and looked up a UK fund mentioned in thread above. Its at this page: http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/mutual-fund-rates/?symbo...
I didn't see any option for download, which is what the extension does. As well the Jupiter High Income fund there was no historical prices. But I will pass on this suggestion to the developers.
Tom
15 Posted by ramv on 15 May, 2011 07:14 AM
Hi - another new user and like others, seeking help on this.
Pennies vs pounds option as my download is making me a billionaire
Uk mutuals ot found.
Any ideas - especially on 1 ?
Thanks
Viv
Support Staff 16 Posted by Ben Spencer on 15 May, 2011 03:11 PM
Hi
1) Go to extensions->Quotes and Exchange Rates... on the security in question change the Exchange to "London Exchange (Pence)".
2) Yahoo stopped providing downloads for UK mutual finds in November last year. I am afraid we do not yet have a solution.
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
17 Posted by Ian Ashton on 16 Nov, 2011 09:10 PM
I'm also waiting for this as I have a shedload of M&G stocks
e.g. GB0031111700.L
This is available at http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GB0031111700.L&ql=1.
BUT are you saying it's not provided in a download format and so are not accessible to Moneydance?
This has been outstanding for over a year now? Could you be more specific as to what the problem is?
What is the fix? Is it just a manpower problem to get this fixed? Have you thought of asking the Moneydance community for help?
Support Staff 18 Posted by Ben Spencer on 17 Nov, 2011 11:14 PM
The problem is that Yahoo only displays the value of UK mutual funds on their website. They do not provide a way of accessing the data in structured format. Other stocks are available either as a csv download and through the YQL (Yahoo Query Language)
Google don't provide the information either.
Bloomberg only provide the information through a Windows only Excel plugin.
Morningstar only provide the data through their own app.
The crux of the problem is that we have not found a source for downloading the data. If you know of a site that will let you download this data in a structured file. Let us know and we will looking to providing support for downloading from that source.
19 Posted by -Kevin N. on 20 Nov, 2011 03:17 PM
Hi Ben,
Might I suggest that your post # 18 of this thread become a Knowledge Base item or a 'Sticky' of sorts.
There appears to be a number of users requesting this information throughout the forums.
-Kevin N.
20 Posted by David G on 23 Nov, 2011 12:21 AM
Need to get this fixed. Having tried MS Money and Acemoney, I find Moneydance to be a superior program for what I need .... except for this! I've been able to successfully download UK mutual fund prices from those two programs for years (in the case of MS Money,10 years plus) so it is kind of disappointing that Moneydance can't achieve this. It's the only thing that stops me recommending it to family/friends.
If it helps, I download the prices in Acemoney through the "MSN Money UK" option within the Acemoney program.
On a positive note, what a useful forum system this is - it's helped me out on a couple of issues now.
21 Posted by David G on 16 Jan, 2012 12:01 AM
No response to my post...
Why can't Moneydance download UK unit trust prices whereas AceMoney can? AceMoney can use "MSN Money UK" as a source. What is to stop Moneydance using "MSN Money UK"?
Support Staff 22 Posted by Ben Spencer on 16 Jan, 2012 12:09 AM
Can you provide me with an example URL of where price information for a particular security can be downloaded from "MSN Money UK" as a structured file?
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
23 Posted by David G on 21 Jan, 2012 08:34 PM
Unfortunately I don't know where such a link can be found. AceMoney offers a whole list of sources one of which includes MSN Money UK. I've not been able to dig any deeper. Perhaps they purchase a feed? It's not an outrageous idea - we purchase the product, and you purchase the data feed..... Maybe your business people need to pick up the phone to MSN Money UK (or Morningstar etc.) and find out how much they charge (if they do charge). Maybe that's what your competitors do. But I really don't know, I'm just a customer faced with a product that doesn't do what competing products do.
Sorry if my frustration is coming across - I appreciate you coming back to me and am generally happy with the program otherwise.
24 Posted by -Kevin N. on 21 Jan, 2012 09:34 PM
Hi David G,
Have you had a look at hleOfxQuotes?
http://code.google.com/p/hle-ofx-quotes/
It's a java app that was originally designed to work with MS Money but you may be able to coerce it to import into MD.
The latest build, currently (hleOfxQuotes-Build_20111221_78-app.jar) can download quotes from Yahoo, Yahoo Options, ft.com, Google, Yahoo Historical, Bloomberg and Scholarshare.
It can create OFX or QIF files to import.
HTH -Kevin N.
25 Posted by hleofxquotes on 21 Jan, 2012 10:38 PM
I will be happy to extend hleofxquotes to try accommodate MD user that want to use "alternate" quote sources:
. I believe current state is that hlefoxquotes can save the prices into an *.qif file that MD will import. Probably still need a "Dummy" account.
. Probably one useful incremental improvement is to add a button to call MD to import the generated *.qif file directly.
. Another idea is use the current Jython plugin to add the prices directly (save having to deal with the the "Dummy" account import)
. In general, the best path is when someone has a need, gives helofxquotes a try and write something up like: would it be nice if XXX happens .. Ask for something reasonably and generally I will find times to implements.
Best,
26 Posted by hleofxquotes on 21 Jan, 2012 11:34 PM
For UK user(s), a quick pointer regarding hleofxquotes quote sources:
Best quote source for UK is ft.com BUT you will need to create an account with ft.com and have to manually download the exported *.csv file
Next best is Google. You will need to create a Google account and create zero-share transactions.
Next best is Bloomberg.
27 Posted by David G on 22 Jan, 2012 09:29 AM
Thanks for these responses. If I've understood it correctly the "hleofxquotes" app is produced by someone in the open source community. I don't really have a great deal of time to be setting up new programs, seeing if they work etc. I'm more interested in Moneydance providing "press a button" functionality as part of the US$49.99 purchase price, or to put it another way, the same functionality for their UK users as for their US users. Or to put it yet another way, the same functionality as other competing products.
But THANK YOU for these ideas, especially as you seem to be doing Moneydance's work for free, for which I'm grateful. I'll give the ideas a try when I get a chance.
Support Staff 28 Posted by Ben Spencer on 22 Jan, 2012 04:50 PM
In response to David G.
I contacted the folks over at AceMoney asking them how they obtained their data from MSN Money UK. Sadly the response is what I was expecting. AceMoney uses a process called web/screen scraping to lift the data directly out of the web pages.
You can read about web scraping on wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping
The are two major issues with using web scraping.
1) It may be with illegal or against the terms of use of the website being scraped.
2) If the structure of the site being scraped changes the program doing the scraping would need to be modified in order to handle the new structure.
At this time because of the potential legal ramifications and the instability of data retrieval we are not willing to use web scraping to obtain quotes.
Sincerely
Ben Spencer
Moneydance Support
29 Posted by Darrel on 21 Feb, 2012 01:32 AM
I have just one UK fund that the Quotes and Exchange plugin cant currently get the price for. The price is given on all the big financial sites and also on the various fund supermarket sites. Everything else I have is Exchange traded, so poses no problem.
Could anyone point me to a way of using hleofxquotes or the Jyson plugin or some other technique to get this one price into Moneydance once a day, simply and preferably automatically, without having to launch an external programme?
I earn my living from PC networking, so I have no trouble following logical procedures, but all I know about Java is that it's an Indonesian island.