UK Mutual Funds - online Current Price problems
Hi,
I'm looking to switch from MS Money, have been checking out
Moneydance & I'm completely stumped trying to get online Quotes
working for any UK Mutual fund. I've read the blogs/forum
extensively and I'm not sure if I've walked into a MD deficiency, a
change in Yahoo or user-error!
Using Moneydance 2010r3 (751) on Mac 10.6.6.
My Moneydance file is set for GBP.
I've downloaded the Quotes & Exchange Rates extension (build
72) from the Add -> Internet option; only Current Security
Prices is set on (Currency Exchange & Historical Prices are set
to "Do Not Update").
To keep it simple, I'm using 2 securities:
Standard Life (UK stock); symbol = SL
Invesco Perpetual High Income (UK mutual fund); symbol =
GB0033031484 (problems are consistent for several other UK Mutual
Funds)
I've edited both securities and set their Type (Stock; Mutual) accordingly.
Both of the above securities are listed fine at:
uk.finance.yahoo.com
finance.yahoo.com
In the MD Extension, no matter what combination of Yahoo setting
or Stock Exchange I set, I cannot get a Current Price for any UK
Mutual Fund.
I can only get a Current Price (in £££) for the
"SL" Stock if I set it to use the "Yahoo Finance USA" and the Stock
Exchange as "London Exchange (Pence)"; screenshot attached.
If I set the Extension to use "Yahoo Finance UK", even the Stock
update fails (attached).
My gut feeling is that I've set something incorrectly but after
hours of testing and blog searching, I'm no closer to a
resolution.
Any suggestions much appreciated.
Gary
MD1.png
MD2.png
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31 Posted by Ray J on 12 Jun, 2011 08:02 PM
Hi,
Can I add a vote to this. I switched from MS Money to MD over a year ago and am generally very happy - except for having to enter my (albeit very small number of) fund prices by hand. When I upgraded to 2011 yesterday and saw in the help file that yahoo uk was now an option, I tried setting this up again. However even though the ticker symbol finds the prices fine on the yahoo uk website - I can't get it to download directly using the extension.
(Otherwise a really useful product - and I was very happy to see that in the new matching sidebar, the memo field IS available as a hover "tip".)
Anyway - here's hoping!
32 Posted by anthonypinkfish on 09 Jul, 2012 10:33 PM
Any news on a fix for this issue - i have 40 funds that i have to update would be very useful
Anthony
33 Posted by Scott Meehan on 09 Jul, 2012 11:05 PM
Hi All,
Unfortunately there is no news on this feature request, however it is in our system and being looked into, but I don't as of yet have a time frame.
Sorry I don't have better news!
Scott Meehan
Moneydance Support
34 Posted by richard on 23 Jul, 2012 09:15 AM
This is a show stopper for me.
I've been trying to get rid of MS Money for several years now since it was dropped by MS, but I just can't find any product that can download UK funds (and ideally Swiss funds too).
Ironically, despite MS stopping support for Money, their product still downloads UK fund prices!
35 Posted by Jon Hoover on 29 Jul, 2012 06:54 PM
Richard,
Would you happen to know where or how Money is downloading the data from?
Sincerely,
Jon Hoover, Moneydance Support
36 Posted by DARON SKIPPER on 30 Jul, 2012 11:22 AM
Hi Money downloads from MSN via morningstar.
________________________________
From: Jon Hoover <[email blocked]>
To: [email blocked]
Sent: Sunday, 29 July 2012, 15:55
Subject: Re: UK Mutual Funds - online Current Price problems [Switching to Moneydance from Microsoft Money?]
37 Posted by Scott Meehan on 30 Jul, 2012 03:59 PM
Hi Daron,
Thanks for the information! We'll be looking into the possibility of using them as a feed.
Scott Meehan
Moneydance Support
38 Posted by anthonypinkfish on 03 Aug, 2012 11:37 AM
Hi All,
I agree with the above.
i have switched from ms money, and have started to trial md in parallel - and note the old defunct ms money can down load uk fund prices and md cannot.
This is a show stopper!
When will md help it uk users finally let go of ms money?
Anthony
39 Posted by richard_regal on 04 Nov, 2012 06:40 PM
Any news on this yet? It is a bit of a show stopper.
40 Posted by Jessica Little on 05 Nov, 2012 12:17 PM
We haven't yet implemented this feature, as the current is a bit of a pain to maintain. We're still looking into various options, however, and will update here when it's implemented.
Jessica Little
Moneydance Support
41 Posted by richard_regal on 23 Feb, 2013 04:16 PM
What options have you been looking into over the past 3 months? Any progress with any of them?
42 Posted by Jon Hoover on 23 Feb, 2013 04:19 PM
Hi,
We've looked at various for-pay services but often the costs don't really work out.
Sorry to not have better news.
Sincerely,
Jon Hoover, Moneydance Support
43 Posted by Robert on 25 Jul, 2013 01:04 PM
Can I add a vote for using Morningstar as a data source for UK fund prices. Yahoo UK is very very limited, whereas Morningstar is highly comprehensive.
44 Posted by Paul on 19 Oct, 2013 06:27 AM
I also think MD should add data sources to improve international coverage.
Acemoney supports Yahoo, Yahoo UK, Money Central, Google Finance, AMFI India, India Times, Russian Trade System and Zagreb Stock Exchange.
I wonder how they do that?
45 Posted by Chris on 04 Jan, 2014 01:39 PM
Any movement on this issue? I downloaded the trial software, added a UK mutual fund (KAMES STRATEGIC BOND A Acc), installed the quotes & exchange rates extension and ran it - it claims that the mutual fund doesn't exist (History: 404 error, Current: null) when accessing Yahoo Finance UK. Yet I can access the price just fine on Yahoo Finance UK using the identical ticker symbol (GB0033988543, which extends to GB0033988543.L when I select "London Exchange GBP" in the quotes & exchange rates advanced dialogue).
Try it here:
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GB0033988543.L&ql=1
Perhaps I'm doing something wrong, but I can't see it. Assuming it's the extension that's broken, that forces me to use yahoo finance uk to track my portfolio - and so for me the key product differentiator for Moneydance is lost.
As has been said above, this is a show-stopper. I'll try Acemoney next.
46 Posted by Jon Hoover on 04 Jan, 2014 05:51 PM
Hi Chris,
I'm sorry but yahoo does not make available through its quotes server UK mutual fund prices, even though they do provide it through their website.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Sincerely,
Jon Hoover, Moneydance Support
47 Posted by Chris on 04 Jan, 2014 07:37 PM
I posted my query about 6 hours ago. I then read several other Moneydance threads all saying "it can't be done". This is clearly a very-long-standing problem.
I therefore decided to solve my problem. Essentially, I need two types of data - (i) historical data to make investment decisions - well, i can get that for UK funds on MorningStar and msn - I can view charts etc and if I know the ISIN I can download historical data for most (but not quite all) my UK funds. That was easy, but not a final solution. (ii) I need to have automated price updates for all those funds in my portfolio, so that I can track the value of my portfolio through time. It turns out that spot quotes are available on many sites, so all I need is a program that will access the web pages, which knows the site's local codes for the funds (not always the ISIN) and can construct the appropriate URL, then download the HTML and effectively screen-scrape to get rid of everything except the date and the price quote. That also turned out to be fairly easy - a simple matter of programming. I now have two files - a data file with all the fund details including the special codes, and a program file which does the web page access and data-manipulation (with a suitable time delay inserted between each access so that I don't freak out the target web server). Now I can automate the program to run every day or every week and each time it runs it will append to one or more data files. This will solve my "instant portfolio valuation" problem, and after a while I will have a good set a historical data so I can value my portfolio historically.
I anticipate that occasionally the target web site will slightly change its format and I may need to change the data-manipulation. But it won't be often, and other similar data-compatibility problems happen all the time with financial software.
Now I'm wondering - (1) given that Moneydance users (and potential users) have been hollering for help on this problem for - what? - months? years? and I've been able to get a lash-up solution running in a few hours, what have the Moneydance techs been doing all this time? and (2) do I really need Moneydance?
At the very least, it should be possible for Moneydance to download historical UK fund data from msn (maybe not for every fund, but for a large number of them). And, next, it should be possible for Moneydance to access instant quotes for UK funds from morningstar (or elsewhere) and use them to provide not only current prices but also a growing local cache of historical prices.
So here's a challenge for the Moneydance techs - get it fixed (it should take no more than a few hours) and I'll buy Moneydance and be your biggest fan :-)
Chris
48 Posted by Jon Hoover on 05 Jan, 2014 01:53 AM
Hi Chris,
I'm glad you have figured out a solution that works for you. It is our opinion that keeping up the screen scraping to deal with changes in various sites is more overhead then we are looking for, especially since we are able to get most investment data out there (it is regrettable that we can't get the UK mutual funds).
If you do decide to use Moneydance you can import the histories you generate in a CSV format by selecting the security in the securities detail and pressing the history button, and then the Import button and bringing in the CSV.
I'm glad you have found a way for yourself to get the security data you need.
Sincerely,
Jon Hoover, Moneydance Support
49 Posted by Chris on 05 Jan, 2014 11:34 AM
For anyone else who's reading this thread - a script to grab the current fund prices from Morningstar (they're a one-stop-shop, so this only needs to be done for one site) can be written in just 34 lines (including validation code - the screen-scraping code is a single line). Most of my "6 hours" between asking the question and getting my own solution was idle - it only took about an hour to write, test & debug the code (yes, I'm old and slow - it should have been quicker). If ever it needs updating (maybe once a year) it will need no more than one hour to update, test & debug.
Next, importing the prices into Moneydance. Doing this per fund is a pain because it's too deep in the mouse-clicking hierarchy - even if you have only one fund! (and of course the standard CSV-import code is poorly documented, so good luck with getting it to work at all). With more than one fund you'd definitely be better off writing a Jython script to import them all at once (and check for duplicates etc). This script will take much longer to write (I've never programmed in Jython before, and the Moneydance documentation is extremely poor) but I'm guessing about 5-9 hours to learn the language and learn the Moneydance API, write the code, test & debug. Then it's just four clicks each time you want to update all fund prices at once (Extensions-Python Interface-Read from file-).
My thoughts so far on Moneydance are that (1) as it stands it doesn't do the job that I need to be done; (2) the documentation is very poor - as noted by a very high percentage of users; (3) user support is responsive and polite (thanks Jon!); (3) the tech support however appears to be overwhelmed and unable to deliver even quite simple solutions; (4) the saving grace is perhaps the Jython interface which should allow users to solve problems for themselves if they can program, but given the poor documentation and (from reading other threads) the way that MD upgrades can cause previously written scripts to fail, I'm concerned that this will be a high-maintenance route.
Just a thought, but I wonder if the original techs who wrote the MD system have left the company?
Chris
50 Posted by paul on 05 Jan, 2014 01:11 PM
Hi Chris,
Would it be possible to see a copy of your script (I have sufficient scripting knowledge to modify for my own funds if needed, but you would save me a a few hours of experimentation !)
thanks !
51 Posted by Chris on 05 Jan, 2014 01:50 PM
Hi Paul,
Sure. It's a Bourne Shell script and it's exceedingly simple. I've also spent a couple of hours this morning learning Jython and some of the MD API, and wrote a Jython script to read in the funds data and update the snapshots for the accounts all at once. However, it doesn't appear to have worked (the updated price doesn't show on my Investment Account "Securities Detail" screen - it may be my misunderstanding about how setSnapshotInt() works, or maybe it just doesn't work or it's the wrong method to call - it's difficult to know without better documentation.
Are you happy to read a Bourne Shell script and where shall i send it?
Chris
52 Posted by paul on 05 Jan, 2014 02:50 PM
Hi Chris,
A Bash script will be a nice nostalgia trip.
Would you be happy attaching to this thread (I'm not sure that this forum support Private Message feature) ?
Thanks !
- Paul
53 Posted by Chris on 05 Jan, 2014 04:02 PM
Hi Paul,
"Simples" (if you're US-based you probably won't understand that reference :-) )
First I have a data file called DATA containing one-per-line records for each fund. Each line in the datafile looks like this:
Artemis Income R Acc,GB0032567926,F0GBR04FG6
The first field (comma-separated) is the name of the account, the second field is the ISIN and the third field is Morningstar's secial code to insert inside the URL to pull up their page containing the current quote. You'll have to go to morning star's site to work out what they are for each of your funds - there may be a systematic way to work it out from the ISIN or other identifier, or maybe there's a table somewhere, but I suspect not. I just enetered the account name into morningstar's search and it jumped to the page and I grabbed the code from the URL showing at the top of the browser.
Now here's the Bourne Shell script (NB it is Bourne, not Bash). I've ripped out some boring validation code (creates directories/files if they don't exist) so that you can focus on the only two lines that matter: i.e. the lines starting "content=" and "temp="
I've split the latter out across 4 lines to make it slightly easier to understand. The output is appended to a file called PRICESFILE, and I have chosen tostart each line with the assetname but you can split up the output into separate files if you like. Oh yes, and I sleep for 2 seconds between each hit on the morningstar site - maybe that should be a longer sleep (my task is not particularly time sensitive, since my fund prices typically update once a day, and I'd rather not get a bad reputation with Morningstar).
#!/bin/sh IFS=","
while
read assetname isin code
do
content=
/usr/bin/curl -L -s 'http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/funds/snapshot/snapshot.aspx?id='$codetemp=echo $content | /usr/bin/sed 's/<tr>/^M<tr>/g' | /usr/bin/tr '\015' '\012' | /usr/bin/grep NAV | /usr/bin/sed -e 's/<[^>]*>/ /g' -e 's/ */ /g' -e 's/ NAV //' -e 's/[^A-Z0-9/.]//g'date=echo $temp | /usr/bin/sed 's/\(..........\).*/\1/'currency=echo $temp | /usr/bin/sed 's/..........\(...\).*/\1/'price=echo $temp | /usr/bin/sed -e 's/.............\(.*\)/\1/'done < DATA
However, beware that in copying and pasting the code into this text box there might have been some tiny corruption. Also beware that this example comes with absolutely no warranties or representations of any kind :-)
The above script then needs to be executed automatically every day (say) - you can do that using launchctl (OS X) or cron (other Unix variant). I'm sure some bright spark will find a way to do the same for Windows.
Chris
54 Posted by Chris on 05 Jan, 2014 04:10 PM
Oh dear - that copy and paste didn't work as planned, did it? Sorry - it looked OK on the screen before I sent it. Anyway, as long as you know where the lines start (content=, temp=, date=, currency=, price= and echo) then it's all there (NB the line "done < DATA" is an important part of the script).
Chris
55 Posted by richard_regal on 05 Jan, 2014 06:09 PM
Thanks to whoever suggested ACEMoney. Boy their import from MS Money was a breeze. They get the same yahoo feed as the extension to MoneyDance picks up so many of my funds will still not be available through them as Yahoo does not have reference for them. Bizarrely the ones ACE/Yahoo site comes up with quotes that differ from the feed MD uses, and the MD ones match the ones the fund managers give.
I have still to ditch MS money (after all, if I have to update my quotes manually in MD, why move) so am deciding between ACE and MD. Not a good choice. ACE allows very easy import of data, 3 file imports at most but gets the share price wrong, MD has a cumbersome (to be kind) import process but gets some quotes partly right.
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