Historical Data Sources and Symbols for Major US Equity Indexes

# How can one query the Google Finance API for Dow Jones and S&P 500 values?


# How can one query the Google Finance API for Dow Jones and S&P 500 values?












The queries for Dow Jones and S&P 500 will result in error:

- http://www.google.com/finance/historical?q=.INX&startdate=May+11%2c+2015&enddate=May+17%2c+2016&output=csv

- http://www.google.com/finance/historical?q=DJIA&startdate=May+11%2c+2015&enddate=May+17%2c+2016&output=csv

While a query for Apple will succeed:

- http://www.google.com/finance/historical?q=AAPL&startdate=May+11%2c+2015&enddate=May+17%2c+2016&output=csv

## Answer by Valtinho (score 4)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/31106

This is not something you will want to hear, but most free websites have licensing issues and display limited or no download links for S&P and DJI. I recommend you use quantdl or stooq instead.

Here are some stooq download links:

DJI:

```
https://stooq.com/q/d/l/?s=^dji&i=d
```

S&P:

```
https://stooq.com/q/d/l/?s=^spx&i=d
```

You do need to clean up the data before you use it though. S&P data goes all the way back to 1789 and DJI goes back to 1896, so I don't even know if it is possible... I wouldn't trust any data before 1960 on any website.

## Answer by user24060 (score 2)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/29746

The wsj website lets you download csv data for DJI. If you play around a little bit, you can figure out the url query to kick off a download. The, you can use Powershell to make the download programmatic (note: this script also accesses stock quotes from yahoo finance using their currently available csv download method) (Note: the codes for the yahoo query are documented here: http://www.canbike.org/information-technology/yahoo-finance-url-download-to-a-csv-file.html)

```
#script follows

cls

Function Get-LastFriday
{

    $djiDate = [DateTime]::Now

    while ($djiDate.DayOfWeek -ne "Friday")
    {

        $djiDate= [DateTime]::Now.AddDays(-1)

    }

    return $djiDate
 }

#prototype: quotes.wsj.com/index/DJIA/historical-prices/download?MOD_VIEW=page&num_rows=1&range_days=1&startDate=08/20/2016&endDate=08/20/2016

$djiDate = Get-LastFriday

$startDate = $endDate = ([String]$djiDate.Month) + "/" +  ([String]$djiDate.Day) + "/" + ([String]$djiDate.Year) 
$uri = "quotes.wsj.com/index/DJIA/historical-prices/download?MOD_VIEW=page&num_rows=1&range_"+$startDate+"&endDate="+$endDate

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $uri -OutFile "C:\Users\xxxx\Desktop\dji.csv"
Import-Csv -Header Date, Open, High, Low, Close -LiteralPath "C:\Users\bill\Desktop\dji.csv" | Out-GridView

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=^DJI,VWIAX,VMMXX,VWELX,DODGX&f=nsl1d1t1p&e=.csv" -OutFile "C:\Users\xxxx\Desktop\q.csv"
Import-Csv -Header Name, Symbol, 'Last Trade', 'Trade Date', 'Last Trade Time', p -LiteralPath "C:\Users\bill\Desktop\q.csv" | Out-GridView
```

## Answer by AreWeOnVox (score 2)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/34656

Symbol for DJIA is ".DJI" (without the quotes but with the leading period) https://www.google.com/finance/historical?q=.DJI&startdate=Jun+01%2C+2017&output=txt

Symbol for NASDAQ is ".IXIC" (without the quotes but with the leading period) https://www.google.com/finance/historical?q=.IXIC&startdate=Jun+01%2C+2017&output=txt

Symbol for S&P500 is ".INX" (without the quotes but with the leading period) https://www.google.com/finance/historical?q=.INX&startdate=Jun+01%2C+2017&output=txt

## Answer by Kyle Nardon (score 2)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/60726

if you reference these actual index name it works

INDEXSP:.INX INDEXDJX:.DJI

## Answer by Jan Stuller (score 1)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/60746

Pandas DataReader (separate library to Pandas) works with Yahoo finance (not google finance).

Installation: pip install pandas_datareader

Code: I just run the below to get the SPX data between 2010 and 2015 and it works:

This link here has an up-to-date list of supported data providers (Yahoo is not there right now but the code still works as shown above & returns good data).

## Answer by Brian O'Donnell (score 0)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/26080

It appears that Google doesn't support downloading data for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and quite possibly the S&P 500 Index too. See the end of this thread: http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/excel-questions/471110-web-query-obtain-historical-stock-data-using-google-finance.html.

You can use the code provided top right by Google when you search for Dow Jones Today (or any other stock market), so =googlefinance("INDEXDJX:.DJI"). Not sure where the code comes from but it works fine.