Stock symbol auto-complete API

Question

I am looking for some stock symbol look-up API. I could able to query yahoo finance with a symbol & could able to retrieve the stock price & other details.

I am looking for some auto-complete stock look-up API like if i query fo "Go*" ... how can i get all stock symbols starting with GO* = Goog etc ... is there any APi for wildcard stock symbol searches

Any help would be great ..

Thanks

Comeuppance

was there any resolution to this post? – Genevagenevan

Answer 1

There's a simple problem here and a more complex problem.

If your list of symbols is static, then you could use any typical autocomplete API against a file that you maintain locally.

However, the list of symbols is rarely static. Symbols are constantly being added or erased and changed due to a variety of financial market situations (IPO, acquisitions, mergers, renames, bankrupcies, etc.). Many symbols are also traded on specific exchanges, and some symbols are cross listed. There are also financial instruments that are not simply stocks, such as indices, commodities, etc. The general term for this is "instruments definitions" and a complete list of such definitions is a service provided by companies such as Reuters or Bloomberg.

I am not familiar with any free and open instrument lists that you could get for free, and you need to make sure that you are complying with the licenses of services that allow you to get a current list.

If you can tolerate a delay of one business day, you might be able to scrape the list from a variety of sources that provide close-of-business listings for all stocks in the US. The WSJ has a printed list (likely also an electronic one). Eoddata provides such a list, etc. But make sure that you are complying with their terms.

Boomkin

Thanks for the answer. One option is to host the entire static symbol list on my side & can do some auto-completion. My problem is: like to know if there is any public API where i can query like goo* & get all stock symbols starting with goo. I am curious, because i have seen some web clients or iPhone apps like stock wars, virtual stock trader, stock millioniare etc.. where if i enter goo*, i get all symbols starting with goo. I doubt every one is hosting their own entire stock DB on their side for each of these apps. Would be great if any knows on how they perform wild card query? Thanks – Comeuppance

@Satish: I admit that I'm not sure. I do think they manage their own local symbol file (latency and bandwidth would probably be too long to go externally with every query). Those who do not license it probably get a feed with last day's closing, sanitize the symbol column and use it for column. There are a lot of free sources for last day's closings. – Boomkin

Answer 2

yahoo has an api for this:

http://d.yimg.com/autoc.finance.yahoo.com/autoc?query=GOO&callback=YAHOO.Finance.SymbolSuggest.ssCallback

Extradition

seems like they added 2 additional param,"region" and "lang". try the following d.yimg.com/autoc.finance.yahoo.com/… – Sekofski

Answer 3

Any autocomplete API or toolkit should work if you put the tickers in as a source. You will probably have to host it yourself as I don't know of any public ones.

Kuopio

Answer 4

You can try using the "Company Search" operation in the Company Fundamentals API here: http://www.mergent.com/servius/

Plenum