Breaking away from the Jim Swindle US Database thread slightly .... Yahoo has 215 Industry symbols in which I have created an excel spreadsheet with the following columns: Sector, Industry, Name, and Symbol for example Basic Materials, Agricultural Chemicals, Agricultural Chemicals, ^YHOh702
(Industry and Name are always the same) Before anyone gets excited you need to know that I am not impressed with the quality of this data. First off these symbols have no history and are therefore available only on the "current" servers. I am missing a few days because I waited too long before updating my database. Second, there is no volume associated with each industry. Third, there continues to be large spikes in the data (either out of place high or low). Fourth, unlike TC2005 which offered a symbol for the Sector (with volume) Yahoo offers no such symbol. But the biggest kicker of them all is that Yahoo has reassigned all of them. My list is totally wrong. I have no clue what happened. For example when you click on this link: http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/836.html It brings you to Diversified Electronics Industry. That "836" use to be the Department Stores Industry. I know I did not make any errors as I have reviewed all of my documents, notes, email threads with a few friends and every shred of evidence points that those symbols (^YH0h836 Diversified Electronics was Department Stores) have changed. For me I am not going to worry about using the Yahoo Industry symbols. I am no expert in programming nor how to query the Yahoo Profile page which will provide the Sector and Industry that a stock is assigned to as in: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=belfb Having a program that will tell me what symbols have been added and which symbols are no longer available is of use to me. Regards, MM
