NAME

Finance::YahooQuote - Get stock quotes from Yahoo! Finance

SYNOPSIS

  use Finance::YahooQuote;
  # setting TIMEOUT and PROXY is optional
  $Finance::YahooQuote::TIMEOUT = 60;
  $Finance::YahooQuote::PROXY = "http://some.where.net:8080";
  @quote = getonequote $symbol; # Get a quote for a single symbol
  @quotes = getquote @symbols;  # Get quotes for a bunch of symbols
  useExtendedQueryFormat();     # switch to extended query format
  useRealtimeQueryFormat();     # switch to real-time query format
  @quotes = getquote @symbols;  # Get quotes for a bunch of symbols
  @quotes = getcustomquote(["DELL","IBM"], # using custom format
                           ["Name","Book Value"]); # note array refs

DESCRIPTION

NOTE: As of November 2017, the module is no longer all that useful as Yahoo! decided to halt the API service it relies on.

This module gets stock quotes from Yahoo! Finance. The getonequote function will return a quote for a single stock symbol, while the getquote function will return a quote for each of the stock symbols passed to it. getcustomquote allows to specify a format other than the default to take advantage of the extended range of available information.

The download operation is efficient: only one request is made even if several symbols are requested at once. The return value of getonequote is an array, with the following elements:

    0 Symbol
    1 Company Name
    2 Last Price
    3 Last Trade Date
    4 Last Trade Time
    5 Change
    6 Percent Change
    7 Volume
    8 Average Daily Vol
    9 Bid
    10 Ask
    11 Previous Close
    12 Today's Open
    13 Day's Range
    14 52-Week Range
    15 Earnings per Share
    16 P/E Ratio
    17 Dividend Pay Date
    18 Dividend per Share
    19 Dividend Yield
    20 Market Capitalization
    21 Stock Exchange

If the extended format has been selected, the following fields are also retrieved:

    22 Short ratio
    23 1yr Target Price
    24 EPS Est. Current Yr
    25 EPS Est. Next Year
    26 EPS Est. Next Quarter
    27 Price/EPS Est. Current Yr
    28 Price/EPS Est. Next Yr
    29 PEG Ratio
    30 Book Value
    31 Price/Book
    32 Price/Sales
    33 EBITDA
    34 50-day Moving Avg
    35 200-day Moving Avg

If the real-time format has been selected, the following fields are also retrieved:

    36 Ask (real-time)
    37 Bid (real-time)
    38 Change in Percent (real-time)
    39 Last trade with time (real-time)
    40 Change (real-time)
    41 Day range (real-time)
    42 Market-cap (real-time)

The getquote function returns an array of pointers to arrays with the above structure.

The getonequote function returns just one quote, rather than an array. It returns a simple array of values for the given symbol.

The setQueryString permits to supply a new query string that will be used for subsequent data requests.

The useExtendedQueryFormat and useRealtimeQueryFormat are simpler interfaces which append symbols to the default quote string, as detailed above.

The getcustomquote returns an array of quotes corresponding to values for the symbols supplied in the first array reference, and the custom fields supplied in the second array reference. Here the custom fields correspond to the 'named' fields of the list below.

Beyond stock quotes, Finance::YahooQuote can also obtain quotes for currencies (from the Philadephia exchange -- however Yahoo! appears to have stopped to support the currency symbols in a reliable manner), US mutual funds, options on US stocks, several precious metals and quite possibly more; see the Yahoo! Finance website for full information. Finance::YahooQuote can be used for stocks from the USA, Canada, various European exchanges, various Asian exchanges (Singapore, Taiwan, HongKong, Kuala Lumpur, ...) Australia and New Zealand. It should work for other markets supported by Yahoo.

You may optionally override the default LWP timeout of 180 seconds by setting $Finance::YahooQuote::TIMEOUT to your preferred value.

You may also provide a proxy (for the required http connection) by using the variable $Finance::YahooQuote::PROXY. Furthermore, authentication-based proxies can be used by setting the proxy user and password via the variables $Finance::YahooQuote::PROXYUSER and $Finance::YahooQuote::PROXYPASSWD.

Two example scripts are provided to help with the mapping a stock symbols as well as with Yahoo! Finance server codes. The regression tests scripts in the t/ subdirectory of the source distribution also contain simple examples.

The available custom fields

The following list contains all the available data fields at Yahoo! along with the corresponding format string entry:

      Symbol                            s
      Name                              n
      Last Trade (With Time)            l
      Last Trade (Price Only)           l1
      Last Trade Date                   d1
      Last Trade Time                   t1
      Last Trade Size                   k3
      Change and Percent Change         c
      Change                            c1
      Change in Percent                 p2
      Ticker Trend                      t7
      Volume                            v
      Average Daily Volume              a2
      More Info                         i
      Trade Links                       t6
      Bid                               b
      Bid Size                          b6
      Ask                               a
      Ask Size                          a5
      Previous Close                    p
      Open                              o
      Day's Range                       m
      52-week Range                     w
      Change From 52-wk Low             j5
      Pct Chg From 52-wk Low            j6
      Change From 52-wk High            k4
      Pct Chg From 52-wk High           k5
      Earnings/Share                    e
      P/E Ratio                         r
      Short Ratio                       s7
      Dividend Pay Date                 r1
      Ex-Dividend Date                  q
      Dividend/Share                    d
      Dividend Yield                    y
      Float Shares                      f6
      Market Capitalization             j1
      1yr Target Price                  t8
      EPS Est. Current Yr               e7
      EPS Est. Next Year                e8
      EPS Est. Next Quarter             e9
      Price/EPS Est. Current Yr         r6
      Price/EPS Est. Next Yr            r7
      PEG Ratio                         r5
      Book Value                        b4
      Price/Book                        p6
      Price/Sales                       p5
      EBITDA                            j4
      50-day Moving Avg                 m3
      Change From 50-day Moving Avg     m7
      Pct Chg From 50-day Moving Avg    m8
      200-day Moving Avg                m4
      Change From 200-day Moving Avg    m5
      Pct Chg From 200-day Moving Avg   m6
      Shares Owned                      s1
      Price Paid                        p1
      Commission                        c3
      Holdings Value                    v1
      Day's Value Change                w1,
      Holdings Gain Percent             g1
      Holdings Gain                     g4
      Trade Date                        d2
      Annualized Gain                   g3
      High Limit                        l2
      Low Limit                         l3
      Notes                             n4
      Last Trade (Real-time) with Time  k1
      Bid (Real-time)                   b3
      Ask (Real-time)                   b2
      Change Percent (Real-time)        k2
      Change (Real-time)                c6
      Holdings Value (Real-time)        v7
      Day's Value Change (Real-time)    w4
      Holdings Gain Pct (Real-time)     g5
      Holdings Gain (Real-time)         g6
      Day's Range (Real-time)           m2
      Market Cap (Real-time)            j3
      P/E (Real-time)                   r2
      After Hours Change (Real-time)    c8
      Order Book (Real-time)            i5
      Stock Exchange                    x

FAQs

How can one figure out the format string?

Provided a My Yahoo! (http://my.yahoo.com) account, go to the following URL:

    http://edit.my.yahoo.com/config/edit_pfview?.vk=v1

Viewing the source of this page, you will come across the section that defines the menus that let you select which elements go into a particular view. The <option> values are the strings that pick up the information described in the menu item. For example, Symbol refers to the string "s" and name refers to the string "l". Using "sl" as the format string, we would get the symbol followed by the name of the security.

The example script examine_server.sh shows this in some more detail and downloads example .csv files using GNU wget.

What about different stock symbols for the same corporation?

This can be issue. For the first few years, Yahoo! Finance's servers appeared to be cover their respective local markets. E.g., the UK-based servers provided quotes for Europe, the Australian one for the Australia and New Zealand and so on. Hence, one needed to branch and bound code and map symbols to their region's servers.

It now appears that this is no longer required, which is good news as it simplifies coding. However, some old symbols are no longer supported -- yet other, and supported, codes exist for the same company. For example, German stocks used to quoted in terms or their cusip-like 'WKN'. The main server does not support these, but does support newer, acronym-based symbols. The example script examine_server.sh helps in finding the mapping as e.g. from 555750.F to DTEGN.F for Deutsche Telekom.

COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

The information that you obtain with this library may be copyrighted by Yahoo! Inc., and is governed by their usage license. See http://www.yahoo.com/docs/info/gen_disclaimer.html for more information.

AUTHOR

Dj Padzensky ("djpadz@padz.net"), PadzNet, Inc., wrote the original version. Dirk Eddelbuettel ("edd@debian.org") provided several extensions based on DJ's original work and is the current maintainer.