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Using Bloomberg Excel Functions to Retrieve ISINs from Tickers

Article Quant Q&A · Author: Alex Bădoi
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Summary

The document describes a workflow for obtaining ISIN identifiers for listed equities. It starts with a downloadable spreadsheet of exchange tickers, then uses Bloomberg's Excel API to query the ISIN associated with each ticker. This offers a practical way to enrich a ticker list with security identifiers when Bloomberg access is available.

The answer reports that the process worked for the author, but it gives no validation of coverage, treatment of missing or ambiguous ticker mappings, or procedure for CUSIP retrieval. Identifier availability and mapping can depend on the data provider, exchange, and instrument, so the method should be checked against the intended universe before research use. The discussion addresses data collection rather than trading or quantitative analysis itself.

Key ideas

  • A spreadsheet of exchange tickers can serve as the input universe for identifier lookup.
  • Bloomberg's Excel API can return an ISIN when queried with a ticker and market designation.
  • The reported workflow does not explain how to handle missing, ambiguous, or changing ticker mappings.
  • Coverage and identifier accuracy should be checked for the target security universe.

Tags

EquitiesStatistics
Full text
# Where to source security ID data (ISIN, CUSIP)?


# Where to source security ID data (ISIN, CUSIP)?












I am lookign for a list of ISINs or CUSIP for all equity securities traded on the NASDAQ and NYSE.

while not quantitative, this question is directly related to the data collection process of many quant finance studies so I apologize in advance if this is not the appropriate place to ask.

Thanks,

## Answer by Alex Bădoi (score 1, accepted)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/28300

Issue has been sorted. I'll post here for anyone else looking:

I downloaded the Tickers in excel format from the NAz website:

http://www.nasdaq.com/screening/companies-by-industry.aspx?exchange=NASDAQ

Using the Bloomberg terminal in uni and the excel API i have the ticker list in column A and i input the following in column B:

```
=BDP(A2&" US Equity","ID_ISIN")
```

the output is the ISIN for the ticker in A2.

Cheers.

Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.