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Yahoo Finance Ticker Punctuation for Share Classes and Exchanges

Article Quant Q&A · Author: spindoctor
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Summary

The document explains why a Toronto-listed stock symbol containing a period may fail when queried through Yahoo Finance. Its answer distinguishes two uses of punctuation: a dot can identify an exchange suffix, while a dash can identify a share class. It suggests trying the class marker with a dash and appending the Toronto exchange suffix where needed.

The evidence is a specific user report and a short accepted response, rather than a systematic survey of Yahoo’s symbol conventions or a tested data-download workflow. The guidance is useful when troubleshooting equity ticker lookups, but the examples do not establish that every class-share symbol follows the same format or that the convention remains current across data providers.

Key ideas

  • Yahoo Finance may use a dot to separate a ticker from its exchange suffix.
  • A dash may indicate a share class in a Yahoo Finance symbol.
  • Changing punctuation and adding the exchange suffix may help resolve a failed lookup.
  • The example provides a troubleshooting suggestion rather than a universal symbol-format guarantee.

Tags

Equities
Full text
# Yahoo: Downloading Stock data from symbols with a period (.)


# Yahoo: Downloading Stock data from symbols with a period (.)












Hi: I'm using R to start learning about quantitative finance. I'm good at R, just learning finance. Some stocks on the TSX have periods in their names, usually indicating that it's a class B share, for example. The usual functions to download stock data seem to crash on these characters. Thoughts?

```
#load library
library(fImport)
library(quantmod)
#these work
yahooSeries(symbols='AQN')
getSymbols('AQN', src='yahoo')
#These don't
yahooSeries(symbols='ATD.B')
getSymbols('ATD.B', src='yahoo')
```

## Answer by nbbo2 (score 0, accepted)

https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/32183

I believe your symbol ATD.B is returning not found. In Yahoo a dot usually precedes the Exchange (eg. AQN.TO refers to Algonquin, Toronto Exchange). A minus sign (or dash) precedes the class: e.g. RDS-B refers to Royal Dutch, class B. So Try using ATD-B or ATD-B.TO instead of ATD.B.

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