Morningstar Data

[investor-man]

Quick questions for those who know. Anybody use Morningstar as a data provider? I'm looking for an API to fetch fundamentals data from most global exchanges. How much does it cost? - I'm just a guy with a computer, not an institutional investor, so I'm looking for something low cost.

 

Thanks

[randomep]

 

 

my premium is about $130 / yr

[racemize]

You might want to check and see if your local library already subscribes.  Morningstar and valueline are available through mine.

[oddballstocks]

You want the API?  I was quoted that $800/mo is the minimum for data access. Then you pay per field. If you want 10 data points refreshed nightly on FTP it was something like an additional $150 a month. So $950/mo for access via FTP. There is. Huge price jump when you go real time, or semi real time. Even bigger jump if you want real time quotes.

[investor-man]

You want the API?  I was quoted that $800/mo is the minimum for data access. Then you pay per field. If you want 10 data points refreshed nightly on FTP it was something like an additional $150 a month. So $950/mo for access via FTP. There is. Huge price jump when you go real time, or semi real time. Even bigger jump if you want real time quotes.

 

Bah, that's way too much! Are you using another source?

[SpecOps]

I was quoted $1,000 a month for access to their datasets, most other data providers will quote a similar amount.

 

If you are only interested in company level data rather than the raw huge datasets then you can access it in Excel through my site for much cheaper, from $10 a month, link below V

 

Edit: If you are interested in using some raw datasets then send me a pm, I have access to the raw Mergent datafeed and we might be able to work something out.

[Scudbucket]

I've used the API before.  It's not that good - especially with large data amounts.  It usually crashes.  I wouldn't if I were you.

[oddballstocks]

You want the API?  I was quoted that $800/mo is the minimum for data access. Then you pay per field. If you want 10 data points refreshed nightly on FTP it was something like an additional $150 a month. So $950/mo for access via FTP. There is. Huge price jump when you go real time, or semi real time. Even bigger jump if you want real time quotes.

 

Bah, that's way too much! Are you using another source?

 

For CompleteBankData.com we pull all of our financial data straight from the FDIC and Federal Reserve.  This is ALL financial data related to banks and holding companies.  Like Morningstar we sell access to this ourselves.

 

I was looking for a few pieces specific pieces of market data.  Reliable market data is easy to obtain for larger SEC filing companies.  EDGAR filings are easy to parse, and share counts are available.  The problem is how do you find share counts for the 600+ banks that are traded OTC that don't file with the SEC?  OTCMarkets has some data, but not much.  I looked at Morningstar and some others.  We eventually decided to go straight to the source.  I filed a number of requests for regulatory filings for all holding companies in the US, these filings contain share counts as well as insider holdings.  We're in the process of having a team digitize it, and at that point we'll be able to calculate per share values for even the smallest and most liquid banks in the US.  We'll also have insider holding details for every US holding company both public and private.

 

I've ended up spending a lot out of pocket to 'own' this data.  If someone else had it via an API I would very happily pay to get it, and $1k a month wouldn't be bad.  The upside for us is by incorporating this we'll have a dataset that only one other vendor has, even Bloomberg doesn't have this data.

 

Our goal is to get to the point where we have the most comprehensive and most accurate set of data relating to banks in the US.  When this import stuff is complete the only outside piece of data we'll need is the current market price.  And without setting up an exchange there's no way to own that.

 

This is probably more than you cared to know, but maybe a few readers out there find this interesting. 

 

In terms of Morningstar data itself I don't have much experience except for this.  I've had people demo me their FinTech "Bloomberg Killer" apps a number of times.  They are universally built on top of a Morningstar data feed.  The UI's look nice, but there are some data quality issues with M* that I've seen.  These guys cared about charting and fancy UI's much more than data quality.  The problem is the key to Bloomberg is the data, the data is so valuable users will put up with the worst UI I've ever used to get to it.  Data quality is absolutely key.  Who cares about great charts if what they're charting is wrong?

[coc]

 

For CompleteBankData.com we pull all of our financial data straight from the FDIC and Federal Reserve.  This is ALL financial data related to banks and holding companies.  Like Morningstar we sell access to this ourselves.

 

I was looking for a few pieces specific pieces of market data.  Reliable market data is easy to obtain for larger SEC filing companies.  EDGAR filings are easy to parse, and share counts are available.  The problem is how do you find share counts for the 600+ banks that are traded OTC that don't file with the SEC?  OTCMarkets has some data, but not much.  I looked at Morningstar and some others.  We eventually decided to go straight to the source.  I filed a number of requests for regulatory filings for all holding companies in the US, these filings contain share counts as well as insider holdings.  We're in the process of having a team digitize it, and at that point we'll be able to calculate per share values for even the smallest and most liquid banks in the US.  We'll also have insider holding details for every US holding company both public and private.

 

I've ended up spending a lot out of pocket to 'own' this data.  If someone else had it via an API I would very happily pay to get it, and $1k a month wouldn't be bad.  The upside for us is by incorporating this we'll have a dataset that only one other vendor has, even Bloomberg doesn't have this data.

 

Our goal is to get to the point where we have the most comprehensive and most accurate set of data relating to banks in the US.  When this import stuff is complete the only outside piece of data we'll need is the current market price.  And without setting up an exchange there's no way to own that.

 

This is probably more than you cared to know, but maybe a few readers out there find this interesting. 

 

In terms of Morningstar data itself I don't have much experience except for this.  I've had people demo me their FinTech "Bloomberg Killer" apps a number of times.  They are universally built on top of a Morningstar data feed.  The UI's look nice, but there are some data quality issues with M* that I've seen.  These guys cared about charting and fancy UI's much more than data quality.  The problem is the key to Bloomberg is the data, the data is so valuable users will put up with the worst UI I've ever used to get to it.  Data quality is absolutely key.  Who cares about great charts if what they're charting is wrong?

 

If I may ask, how will your data compare with SNL in terms of completeness and accuracy?

[oddballstocks]

 

For CompleteBankData.com we pull all of our financial data straight from the FDIC and Federal Reserve.  This is ALL financial data related to banks and holding companies.  Like Morningstar we sell access to this ourselves.

 

I was looking for a few pieces specific pieces of market data.  Reliable market data is easy to obtain for larger SEC filing companies.  EDGAR filings are easy to parse, and share counts are available.  The problem is how do you find share counts for the 600+ banks that are traded OTC that don't file with the SEC?  OTCMarkets has some data, but not much.  I looked at Morningstar and some others.  We eventually decided to go straight to the source.  I filed a number of requests for regulatory filings for all holding companies in the US, these filings contain share counts as well as insider holdings.  We're in the process of having a team digitize it, and at that point we'll be able to calculate per share values for even the smallest and most liquid banks in the US.  We'll also have insider holding details for every US holding company both public and private.

 

I've ended up spending a lot out of pocket to 'own' this data.  If someone else had it via an API I would very happily pay to get it, and $1k a month wouldn't be bad.  The upside for us is by incorporating this we'll have a dataset that only one other vendor has, even Bloomberg doesn't have this data.

 

Our goal is to get to the point where we have the most comprehensive and most accurate set of data relating to banks in the US.  When this import stuff is complete the only outside piece of data we'll need is the current market price.  And without setting up an exchange there's no way to own that.

 

This is probably more than you cared to know, but maybe a few readers out there find this interesting. 

 

In terms of Morningstar data itself I don't have much experience except for this.  I've had people demo me their FinTech "Bloomberg Killer" apps a number of times.  They are universally built on top of a Morningstar data feed.  The UI's look nice, but there are some data quality issues with M* that I've seen.  These guys cared about charting and fancy UI's much more than data quality.  The problem is the key to Bloomberg is the data, the data is so valuable users will put up with the worst UI I've ever used to get to it.  Data quality is absolutely key.  Who cares about great charts if what they're charting is wrong?

 

If I may ask, how will your data compare with SNL in terms of completeness and accuracy?

 

Same or better.  SNL is inputting data by hand in many cases with a team in Asia, we pull our numbers digitally.  If a number appears in a regulatory filing that exact same number appears in our system.

 

Right now the only gap between our system and SNL is insider information and news for US banks and holding companies.  We have no intentions on becoming a news org, SNL can keep that.  My goal is to continue to add as many additional sources of information as possible going forward.  Fast forward a year or two and I believe we'll have the best data set available for US banks and holding companies.

 

We are using humans to enter insider ownership information (same as SNL).  My guess is this won't be perfect, we've just started the project and so far it's good, but with ~100,000-200,000 pieces of manually entered information I'm sure at some point we'll have an error.

[investor-man]

Thanks for the responses guys. Extremely helpful. One more question - do you know who supplies Gurufocus with its data? Is it also morningstar?

[SpecOps]

Gurufocus uses Morningstar. I had similar experiences to Nate with their data in that it had some issues, which is to be expected when you're manually entering data, no data provider is perfect, but had more than competitors like Factset and CapitalIQ.

[oddballstocks]

Gurufocus uses Morningstar. I had similar experiences to Nate with their data in that it had some issues, which is to be expected when you're manually entering data, no data provider is perfect, but had more than competitors like Factset and CapitalIQ.

 

Yes, I believe Morningstar as well.

 

The best data provider I've seen and used is Bloomberg.  If you have a Terminal you have access to their API.  Documentation is top notch, very easy to work with.  We integrated with them via their app store (APPS <GO>, or APPS BANKS <GO> for our app).  But anyone can use their API, and they have access for every language imaginable.  I believe each user is allowed to pull 500,000 data points per day.  There is a separate calculation for subscription data fields (real time subscriptions).  So you could pull 500 data points for 100 stocks 10 times throughout the day.  The thing is most of those data points only need to be refreshed once, so you can pull a lot more then that if you want.

 

The only rub with Bloomberg is they have what I call a most recent problem.  We initially had this same issue with CompleteBankData while in development.  You run a search for all companies with a P/E of 10.  The search looks at the most recent financials for a company.  The problem is some companies could have last reported in 2007 because they went dark or just disappeared.  If the company has a P/E of 10 in 2007 and didn't merge or go out of business they'd appear in the results.  This is really common on Bloomberg if you look at emerging market companies.  I've run some searches that pull back a ton of companies from very small and off the beaten path countries where the data was last updated years ago.  Yet these are considered 'current' because there is nothing newer.

 

Bloomberg also has an issue with OTC companies.  There is a virtual data black hole when a company stops filing with the SEC.