Excel programming

Spherick

Hey all,

Part of my job is determining the volatility of several public companies stock. It involves going to yahoo finance, pulling their daily stock price for the last X days (yahoo spits this out in an excel spreadsheet), and then I do my voodoo calculations using the daily stock prices.

I was wondering if there was a way to program excel to go out to Yahoo finance and pull the historical prices with noting more than a ticker symbol and date range. I could then set up the formulas so that I could streamline everything and save myself (and a bunch of my co-workers) time.

Any ideas on if this is possible?

localh77

I know that all it takes is a simple formula to pull in stock prices in a Google Docs spreadsheet. You could always have a spreadsheet set up to do that, and then periodically export it to Excel if that's the format you need it in. Depending on how often you need to do it, it shouldn't be too much trouble.

Spherick

Would you happen know where I could read more about this? Not very familiar with google docs

localh77

Sure, here's where you want to go: http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=54198

I also just tried out doing this in Excel (http://www.ehow.com/how_2027266_stock-prices-excel.html). Personally, I didn't think it was as elegant (you have to navigate to the yahoo finance web page and select the stock prices on the screen), but it might meet your needs.

Spherick

Thanks, ill look into both applications. Appreciate your help!

I'm still open to other suggestions if anyone else knows something I don't

Spherick

Hmm, how do I get a @google account in order to use google docs. I don't see a sign-up link

localh77

If you go to the docs.google.com, below the sign in fields there should be a table for creating an account. For me, it looks like this:


Don't have a Google Account?
Create an account now

Spherick

Heh, I was just coming to delete my post. I found the sign-up. Thanks

localh77

No problem. And if you need some help setting up the historical prices formulas, just let me know.

localh77

I went ahead and just set up an example that shows the google stock prices for the past month: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Akrtf5YBzx7udGtwWWl2REVIay1yUnhOeHM2N3RwWkE&hl=en&authkey=CI_HgqkK

Spherick

Yea, I was looking at the GoogleFinance function, however when I use an end date more than a month away, all I get is the last month. I need to pull years of information. Hmmm..

Spherick

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AqylrVL9qOHOdG52ckZxaGZvRE1MR3dhWGRUeVRTM3c&hl=en#gid=0

localh77

Hmm, pulling in more than a month worked fine for me. Are you sure you're adjusting the start date, and not the end date?

By the way, I couldn't access the link you sent. You probably have it set to private.