Quote Loader Price Errors from Yahoo Today
This discussion is public.
Today, after working perfectly every day, the Quote Loader extension reported errors on all prices obtained on both my Windows 11 desktop computer and my MacBook Air M4, both with latest OS installed. I note that nobody else has reported that here or on a Google search.
The source for all prices is Yahoo. The same result was obtained after changing to Yahoo HD. Changing to FT yielded no errors, although yesterday's prices were recorded, probably due to time zone difference. It seems the problem lies with Yahoo and not Quote Loader, but I'm puzzled that no-one else has reported it.
Showing page 3 out of 4. View the first page
Comments are currently closed for this discussion. You can start a new one.
61
Timppa
on 07 May, 2025 02:56 AM
The free AV limit has been 25/day for at least two years. I think longer. You’re not wrong that it has been a moving target (it used to be 3/min) but if you’ll check my comment history you’ll see that I’ve been calling this out for years w/o any updates for either extension.
Again, at the risk of being a broken record, just build in a user configurable throttle. This would also accommodate the paid AV tiers, which have higher limits.
There’s an element of allowing perfection to be the enemy of “good enough” in your objections to these suggestions. All I — and others! — want is to not play this “change the sources one by one on every security we own” game multiple times a year. If you use QL you know how tedious that is.
62
doulos564
on 07 May, 2025 10:00 AM
I have also noticed this behavior starting about the same time. I have only a dozen funds, and half of them are entered manually because they have no public tickers. Yahoo is broken, and I see "error returned 429" in the console. This is the same rate problem discussed last year.
I did find this on StackOverflow which may help. Perhaps the API call is just missing a new requirement.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78111453/yahoo-finance-api-file...
63
Andrew
on 09 May, 2025 03:00 AM
Dar Rob
Have exact same issue as you for a few days now.
Changed source to FT and all is fine
Cheers
Andy
64
Darren
on 09 May, 2025 03:06 AM
Has anyone had luck getting quotes for ETFs? I can quotes for all my stocks
but no bueno for Canadian ETF's.
65
dwg
on 09 May, 2025 04:35 AM
Given that ETFs are market traded I would think that prices should be obtainable.
The key with the sources is that you have to give them what they need to be able to retrieve the price. It not always just the ticker, especially with FT and North American traded securities.
If you want help you need to provide the full name of the security, the ticker and the last known price.
66
dtd
on 09 May, 2025 07:31 AM
@Timppa - do you write code? Have at it!
https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/discussions/investments/9409-quote-loader
67
doulos564
on 09 May, 2025 11:48 AM
I have two Vanguard EFTs, both on NASDAQ. Both are broken with Yahoo HD. On FT HD, VXUS works but VTI is broken.
68
derekkent23
on 09 May, 2025 12:44 PM
I am not support staff, just a user.
Hi doulos564
I simple followed the process outlined I the PDF I have posted a number of time to find an equivalent FT ticker for a ticker used by Yahoo. See screen shot.
Hope this helps.
69
robnich1
on 09 May, 2025 02:33 PM
Things are getting stranger using Quote Loader. Using FT as the source yesterday 5/8/25 all Fidelity mutual fund prices were not updated from the 5/7/25 prices, whereas a Fidelity ETF and a stock were updated. All of my Vanguard mutual fund prices were updated to 5/8 prices correctly. Today 5/9/25, that situation is unchanged as of 7:30 AM Pacific time, with Fidelity funds still showing 5/7 prices.
70
Timppa
on 09 May, 2025 03:01 PM
Pass. I already have a full time job. I'm not terribly interested in taking this on at the expense of my free time for no renumeration. I appreciate those that do but I'm not that person.
These are arguments for this functionality being part of the core application, or at least TIK's extension getting more development attention. It's not tenable to expect people to rely on a labor of love community supported extension for a paid software product. TIK team (presumably) gets compensated for their efforts.
Again, all we need to solve the problem in the short term is a configurable throttle in the Q&ER extension. The 25/day free AV limit would be sufficient for many retail investors. Others can pay.
71
Bob B
on 09 May, 2025 03:22 PM
Just FYI, the solution of setting VPN to a European country no longer works for me. I'm not sure that the throttle setting is the answer. I have all my securities and currencies using FT except for 2 that are not available on FT (Canadian bond issues). Those two fail with the 'number of requests' error.
The two I cannot find on FT are MUB.TO and BND.TO so I just look them up manually and enter their prices. With only 2 out of 100, that works for me for the moment.
I appreciate all the work that Mike Bray has done and this is by no means his fault. I agree that TIK needs a built in solution that covers securities world wide.
72
Stuart Beesley (Mr Toolbox)
on 09 May, 2025 04:22 PM
…
73
markstarr
on 09 May, 2025 04:57 PM
Hi Stuart. Long Time.
So, I get prices on only 2 tickers - certainly not enough to cause request overruns. I get the same 429 error as everyone else, both Yahoo and Yahoo HD. This happens even when I set all to ''Do Not Load' except for 1 ticker.
I don't think the 429 is an real, legitimate error (too many requests). Rather, I think Yahoo has black-listed calls coming from certain known clients/applications. Just a guess though - since I can successfully send the same Request through a browser and get a response.
I will say that the Yahoo quotes through the browser match the prices displayed by my financial institutions. FT is not correct on my Fidelity Fund; FT HD seems to be correct.
Alpha Vantage is correct today, but was NOT correct yesterday - perhaps a delay?
Anyway - all that aside, I understand the Quote Loader extension come with no expectation that financial firms will be open and cooperative.
I wonder though, whether the user-agent value - used when building the HTTP request - could be exposed/editable at least for testing purposes.
Cheers, and thanks!
74
Timppa
on 09 May, 2025 05:14 PM
AV has a 15 minute delay on the paid tiers. They don't disclose the delay on the free key (AFAIK) but I've always just waited until Saturday morning to pull my prices and they've always been accurate.
Doing it a few hours after market close gets correct prices for stocks. Mutual funds are hit or miss. Those I always queue up for Saturday.
FWIW
75
Rich Braun
on 09 May, 2025 06:38 PM
LibreOffice Calc has a Financial Market Extension which provides GETREALTIME() prices by similar screen-scraping methods. Its author cmallwitz reports that Yahoo has stymied him thus far.
@Mike Bray Read the discussion and review the source code at:
https://github.com/cmallwitz/Financials-Extension/issues/130
76
derekkent23
on 09 May, 2025 09:18 PM
I am not support staff, just a user.
Hi Bob
Add free Alpha Vantage key and use this as the source.
See screenshot.
Hope this helps.
77
Darren
on 09 May, 2025 10:43 PM
I can reliably get yahoo quotes using the following script in google sheets. I have no idea if this can be modified to be used in a mxt file.
I would also like to extend my thanks and gratitude to Mike Bray who has maintained Quote Loader for many years. Thankyou Mike.
78
robnich1
on 09 May, 2025 11:23 PM
Deleted
79
kmenningen
on 10 May, 2025 12:27 PM
I'm facing the same issue today, 429 errors. I want to thank @Mike Bray for all his work on Quote Loader. I did a bunch of work with the Quotes and Exchange Rates extension, and agree with other posters that it's a frustrating moving target to reliably get quotes, especially for free. Adding a user agent editable field might help, but it feels like a Band Aid fix, with no guarantee on how long it will last.
What I did personally today was obtain a free AlphaVantage key and switched the source to AlphaVantage. That worked well.
80
robnich1
on 10 May, 2025 02:03 PM
[Still unable to update Fidelity mutual fund prices with QL, even using free Alpha Vantage key. Fidelity ETF and stock prices and all Vanguard mutual fund and ETF prices update correctly with FT as source.]
CORRECTION: My mistake -- Alpha Vantage key WAS successful in obtaining Fidelity mutual fund prices on Saturday morning 5/10/25. Sorry to mislead, and thanks to Derek and others who pointed to the solutions to the failure of Yahoo Finance to provide security price update to Quote Loader, and of course thanks to Mike Bray for all the work on QL.
81
Bob B
on 11 May, 2025 04:34 PM
derekkent23: Thanks so much. I had a AlphaVantage key but I didn't realize that i could download from within QuoteLoader. This is a brilliant way (for me) of dealing with the odd security that is not available on FT. Thank you so much for taking the time to help those of us that are too slow to figure it out.
82
derekkent23
on 11 May, 2025 05:45 PM
I am not support staff, just a user.
Hi Bob
Glad I was able to help.
Have Fan, Stay Safe.
83
jeffstified
on 14 May, 2025 04:18 PM
I switched over to FT HD. Everything works, except spot gold price. That only works on FT, so no prices since previous update. Does Alpha Vantage have historical gold prices? Any other solutions?
Thanks
84
Stuart Beesley (Mr Toolbox)
on 15 May, 2025 04:51 PM
…
85
robnich1
on 20 May, 2025 07:35 PM
Today, 5/20/25, Quote Loader 321706 retrieved all 18 of my Fidelity and Vanguard mutual fund, ETF and stock prices correctly updated, using Yahoo as the source. Back to normal, at least temporarily! Thanks to Stuart Beesley and all others who made it possible. It's a great convenience, and was sorely missed while gone.
86
Timppa
on 20 May, 2025 08:08 PM
I'm going to say the unpopular thing and point out that, as I suspected, the Yahoo! terms of service do actually prohibit the use of scrapers, with my emphasis:
All of this development effort being is being poured into something Yahoo! has made clear they do not authorize and have repeatedly attempted to block. In the extreme case, there could be legal liability here, and I think it's dangerous for TiK to continue to support/develop this method w/o at least consulting with legal counsel. If you want to do it on your own, go for it, but TiK should not be signing the extension or otherwise supporting this scraper feature.
There's an authorized and approved method to collect the same data, via AlphaVantage, which is already built into QL and Q&ER. This is where I'd like to see development efforts focused and future feature enhancements (e.g., higher API limits for Moneydance+ subscribers) considered.
Y'all do you but I'm disinclined to keep using Yahoo! having read their TOS. I definitely don't think TiK should be condoning this at the scale it's currently occurring at. In the other thread there's a person who says they're pulling 100+ securities "once or twice a day." How is this okay in light of the above and Yahoo!'s repeated efforts to block this?
87
markstarr
on 20 May, 2025 10:19 PM
Hello Timppa,
Thanks for reading the TOS. Guess I'll think twice about whether to use the Yahoo channel with QL.
I try to live within the rules when it's not over-burdensome to do so. Yes, I'm one of the 3 or so people that paid for WinRAR (LOL).
I have only 2 tickers I follow and have already bookmarked the Yahoo pages to pick them up.
Cheers and thanks for the heads-up,
88
david.d
on 20 May, 2025 10:25 PM
OTOH, I'm able to use the CSV download to populate an Excel tracking spreadsheet, and presumably could use it to import via one of the other extensions, e.g. Security Price Entry, and thus this is not only functionally equivalent, but arguably functionally indistinguishable. In which case the provision becomes unenforceable, at least in this narrow case. And as a practical matter, individuals aren't the primary target here, but I agree that IK might have some risk in systematically violating TOS.
89
Timppa
on 20 May, 2025 11:15 PM
The scary thing -- for Americans at least -- is there's case law that says the deliberate violation of TOS can be construed as a felony. Look up the prosecutorial history of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Do I think that's likely to happen to individuals using these extensions? No. We still should consider that it's both prohibited by TOS AND Yahoo! has made conscious and deliberate efforts to block it. What the heck are we doing trying to evade those blocks? Best case, it's disrespectful to Yahoo!, who has made their wishes known. Worst case, you're risking civil and potentially criminal liability.
Nobody can plead ignorance here. Even before I found the language, I think we all knew this was likely prohibited. Yahoo! wouldn't be trying to block something that was allowed.
I'll close by saying that I've donated time and money to public benefit Internet services for decades. I have multiple servers in the NTP Pool Project. People have abused such services for as long as they've existed, there's an entire wiki on the subject, and the end result is the services get paywalled or discontinued outright.
We should be doing better. Yahoo! doesn't want us doing this. End of story.
90
dwg
on 21 May, 2025 12:23 AM
The Infinite Kind signing up with service providers for worldwide stock pricing is I would think not viable, a small company simply does not have the resources to do so. AV does not offer worldwide prices, so in my view is not a viable alternative.
The best I think it can do in this space is to have support in the product for various services that provide, like AV, a key that you use in the API requests. It is then up to the user, if they pay for and use such services, assuming they provide what that need.
The alternative is manual download of price files in CSV format and import these using the Security Price Loader. The provision of CSV files is an indication that the use of these does not violate any TOS. That is how users handled it when Yahoo first failed in the mid 2010's.