Detailed Company Information

[SuperJohn]

Hi all,

I have been looking for ASX company data for the last two nights without much luck. I have seen the westpac online brokering website and was pretty impressed with the amount of information they have about each company, just to give you guys an idea of what im after. I dont mind paying for the data or signing up an account, as long as its not too expensive.

I'm looking the data to come in some sort of bulk format such as an FTP or text file downloads, which I think a company called thompson does which I have emailed them about and am waiting on a reply. If not a site that uses simple HTML would be fine, but most use asp or javascript to do their sites.

This is important as im writing a program to do some analysis on the data, if it were simply html i could write the program to rip it straight from the site, but asp and javascript make this impossible in most cases.

Does anyone use comsec or stgeorge/hsbc? are they basic html?

If anyone has suggestions of site or companies to try I would be extremely greatful.



Thanks alot guys :grinsking

[bullmarket]

Hi Superjohn

I'm a comsec client but I don't think they have a bulk download of company data (except for end of day price data) feature. I'm assuming you're after fundamental data when you mention "I have been looking for ASX company data....."

The only suggestion I can think of is maybe contact ASX data providers like Hubb at http://www.hubb.com.au who supply bulk share price and fundamental data to their clients. A list of other data providers should be on the ASX site http://www.asx.com.au )

Good luck :)

bullmarket

[markrmau]

Comsec is in html, and I have done something similar to what you are asking.

To rip the financials for BTV for example, I did something like:

1. Login manually with netscape.
2. My program automatically tells netscape to load and save as text the following URL (for BTV):

http://comres.comsec.com.au/CompanyProfile.asp?SecurityCode=BTV&btnAction=GET+PROFILE&info=FINANCIALS

I used netscape 4.7 because I could tell it to automatically save as text (at the time I couldn't send a message to mozilla to tell it to save as text - function not implemented). Also, I needed a browser to implement the login / cookies etc.

I would post some code but unfortunately this was 1 hard disk crash ago and I'm not sure if I have a backup. Will look if interested.

[SuperJohn]

Thanks guys :D

Markmau, you may want to have a look at a program called wget, its mostly linux based (there is a windows version) but is a command line program that can download things off the web for you, especially websites. You can give it user name an password arguments and even tell it which browser to simulate. Im just making calls to this through a C program and going to give it the html code of the page with the information I want to download.

Still waiting on emails from HSBC, westpac, thompson and another place but they havent even emailed me back yet :sly:


PS. That format of the comsec URL, where you can inject the symbols into it is exactly what I wanted to know (assuming i cant find some bulk data source)

[markrmau]

Thanks for the wget tip - just looked - you can load a cookie file!

So perhaps you can log in using firefox (forgot, you also need javascript), and use wget to load the data by pointing to firefox's cookie file.

Have a closer look at the actual text of the comsec link. The stock code is listed after SecurityCode (BTV in this case)

.......CompanyProfile.asp?SecurityCode=BTV&........

[SuperJohn]

Yeah that kind of link is exactly what i needed, alot of the other sites use asp so the url doesnt change.

I sent in my application to commsec today, express post, so hopefully they will set me up tomorrow so i can get started over the weekend.


Whats the quality of their company information like? Especially the companies finances I havent seen to many other sites but I know westpacs was pretty detailed including forecasts and what not.

Seems so difficult to find detailed fundamental information...