API for financial information?

[gregulator]

Does anyone offer a free API for stock quotes and related information? It looks like google and yahoo used to, but don't anymore?

 

[Crusty]

What kind of information are you looking for specifically? You're not going to get anything real-time for free and historical data can be hard to come by depending on the level of detail you require.

If you just want daily closing prices or something simple I'm sure someone has created a tool to scrape yahoo/google.

 

[xanis]

Bloomberg's Open API might be worth looking at. It has support for a few different languages and it's probably got the data you're looking for.

http://www.openbloomberg.com/open-api/

 

[Crusty]

Bloomberg's Open API might be worth looking at. It has support for a few different languages and it's probably got the data you're looking for.

http://www.openbloomberg.com/open-api/

Wrong kind of free . You still need Bloomberg data subscriptions which are big $$$. They have released their API as free-use in order to encourage other institutions and developers to use their API in their products. So he could write a program that accesses their API, but then would have to pay for the data.

 

[gregulator]

Thanks for the insights. Yeah, I saw the Bloomberg API, but then read the caveats that Crusty mentioned.

I would love to get real time data, but it seems like 15-minute delays will be the best I can do. It almost seems like screen scraping morningstar is the best option for more in depth information.

If I wanted to execute trades, is there a brokerage that offers a good API with an account (ETrade, Scottrade etc)?

 

[Crusty]

Thanks for the insights. Yeah, I saw the Bloomberg API, but then read the caveats that Crusty mentioned.

I would love to get real time data, but it seems like 15-minute delays will be the best I can do. It almost seems like screen scraping morningstar is the best option for more in depth information.

If I wanted to execute trades, is there a brokerage that offers a good API with an account (ETrade, Scottrade etc)?

I'm not sure about the big retail players, I'm sure they all have some sort of API, but I would recommend looking into Interactive Brokers. Their API was very easy to work with when I used them a few years back.

The cheapest option I know of for data is from eSignal, I think for around $150/mo you can get historical data as well as realtime ticks. It's mostly glorified charting software, and their API is a bit cumbersome at times, but you can definitely get data from them. It has basic trading support, but I would recommend looking at something like Ninjatrader for the trading side of things.

 

[Binky]

You want this.
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/smf_addin/

 

[xanis]

Wrong kind of free . You still need Bloomberg data subscriptions which are big $$$. They have released their API as free-use in order to encourage other institutions and developers to use their API in their products. So he could write a program that accesses their API, but then would have to pay for the data.

D'oh. I should have known that, I used to work for Bloomberg...