Since mid October, customers of Charles Schwab brokerage have found that they are unable to download data from their brokerage accounts into 3rd party applications like StockMarketEye. Frustratingly, this was not due to any change made by users or by StockMarketEye. It seems to be something with Schwab’s “direct connect” (i.e. OFX) service.

Based on numerous reports, the change at Schwab was intentional. Many customers have received the response below (or a similar response) from Schwab when contacting them for more information on the situation. Here’s what Schwab has said:

“As of market close on October 16, 2020, Schwab made the decision to restrict access to its legacy OFX (ofx.schwab.com) for all third parties except for: Quicken (personal finance management), TurboTax, and H&R Block (for tax preparation). This step is being taken to secure our clients’ data; and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience it may cause. Third-parties who have historically used OFX to aggregate Schwab client data (such as StockMarketEye) are encouraged to register for access to the [new] Retail Account Aggregation API at “developer.schwab.com”.”

What We’re Doing Now

In the short term, we will release a new version of StockMarketEye which supports importing Schwab’s CSV files that contain historical transactions. New documentation on the steps to do the export at Schwab and the import into StockMarketEye will also be made available. We understand that this process is cumbersome and time consuming. But it is something we can get out to you quickly.

Longer term, we are looking into various ways of using Schwab’s new API. With a new integration for Schwab, importing and updating of Schwab accounts will work smoothly again in StockMarketEye. However, at this time, we don’t have an ETA on when that level of integration will be available. We’ll update this blog post when we have a more concrete timeline in place. Thanks for your patience! 🙂

Updates

[Update – October 29, 2020 – Short-Term Workaround] StockMarketEye 5.3.3 has been released. v5.3.3 includes support for importing Schwab’s historical transaction CSV files. Our User’s Guide contains detailed instructions on how to use the import.

[Update – November 29, 2020 – Interim Workaround] StockMarketEye 5.4 has been released. v5.4 includes support for importing and updating from Charles Schwab again. On the surface, the interim solution allows StockMarketEye to import and update from Schwab just as before. Under the hood, there have been changes which allow StockMarketEye to access Schwab’s “direct connect” service in a more secure and controlled manner. This is a temporary fix, while we work more with Schwab to build out a long term solution using Schwab’s new API. We strongly suggest reading our User’s Guide section on importing from Charles Schwab before importing or updating your Schwab portfolios in StockMarketEye.

Happy New Year! We are proud to announce the release of StockMarketEye 5.1.1 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

This version includes a number of updates for stability and compatibility. Included in the updates are changes in the Summary report for consistency. We’ve also improved the “Update from Brokerages” feature to provide for removing brokerage information from an individual portfolio as well as being able to select/unselect all brokerages in the list.

Our User’s Guide for StockMarketEye v5 has also received a number of improvements and updates. We’ve added many new topics as well as converted and updated pages from the v4 User’s Guide. We’ll continue to make improvements and additions going forward as it’s the best place to start (especially the powerful search feature) when looking for help with StockMarketEye.

https://help.stockmarketeye.com/

Below is the full list of changes in StockMarketEye 5.1.1.

What’s New In StockMarketEye 5.1.1?

• Added support for removing the OFX brokerage info for a specific portfolio on the brokerage multi-update screen.
• Added support for checking/unchecking all portfolios on the brokerage multi-update screen.
• Added support for ignoring the timezone of dates in CSV files during import.
• Enhanced the sorting of the Smiley “:-)” column.
• Enhancements to the Summary report to improve the consistency of the begin/end portfolios in the performance and portfolio sections.
• Fixed issue in Summary report benchmarks which were not converted to the currency of the portfolio.
• Fix for an issue that occurred when calculating the open/close totals for gain/loss items that are for transactions that have specified the Net Total in the portfolio’s currency.
• Fix for an issue with selecting the destination file on the export screen.
• Fix for usability issue when entering re-invested dividend shares and price-per-share.
• Fix for custom date ranges in the chart to prevent them from shifting every time we change symbols.
• Don’t auto-expand the multi-items after adding a new reinvested dividend if there are more than 8 sub-items.
• External chart window title bar changed to “StockMarketEye Chart”.
• Add hotkey (CTRL-U / CMD-U) for opening update-from-brokerages screen.
• Tweaked green (positive numbers) color in tables in light theme.
• Change links in welcome-dialog to point to the new users-guide.
• Charts auto-reload after 3m, 6m and 1h like in v4.
• In BiT, when moving forward/backward months and we are already at end of month, jump to next end of month like in v4.
• Dropdown lists are now a bit more compact.

If you are running StockMarketEye 5, please update at your earliest convenience either through the auto-update feature or by downloading and installing from our website.

We are proud to announce the release of StockMarketEye 4.3.2 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

This release contains a few minor enhancements as well as fixes to improve stability and compatibility.

Below is the full list of changes in StockMarketEye 4.3.2.

What’s New In StockMarketEye 4.3.2?

• Brokerage import (i.e. OFX) improvements for debt transactions (i.e. CDs, bonds, etc).
• Added support for 3 Citigroup brokerages.
• Fix for portfolio group historical value chart containing spikes on days with multiple same split transactions.
• Fix for transaction entry window for “Cover Sort” types that incorrectly applied costs when specific lots were chosen.
• Renamed “MktCap” column to “CapSize” to differentiate from “Mkt Cap”.
• Fix for internal consistency issue when undoing multiple transactions at the same time.
• Enhanced “Optimize Data” feature in Preferences -> Advanced tab to remove more unused data.
• Fix for newly added categories that were not usable until after a restart of StockMarketEye.

This is a free update for anyone already using StockMarketEye 4. If you are using StockMarketEye 4, we highly recommend that you update to the new version.

StockMarketEye (v4.2.5) is no longer able to retrieve current quote data for Google Finance ticker symbols.

We suggest that you switch over your Google Finance ticker symbols to Yahoo Finance ticker symbols. Have a look at this page for how you can do that:

How to Change Ticker Symbols

If you have Google Finance ticker symbols which are not available on Yahoo Finance, you can still maintain them as manually updated symbols. Have a look at this page for how you can update their prices manually:

How to Override the Last Price

Common Ticker Symbol Conversions

What Happened?

During the later part of 2017, Google updated and redesigned their financial news website. The old version of their financial news site, from which StockMarketEye took the quotes, was still available, however.

Over the last few days, Google has taken down the old financial news website. This has made it impossible for StockMarketEye to retrieve current quotes for Google Finance ticker symbols.

Is Any Data Available From Google Finance Now?

It is still possible to get end-of-day (EOD) and intra-day historical data for Google Finance ticker symbols. StockMarketEye uses this historical data to display the charts. The data comes from a different data source at Google, which is currently still available.

However, I suspect that Google will, at some unannounced date in the future, also remove this data source. But at the time of this blog post, it was still working.

What Is StockMarketEye Going To Do?

We’re still deciding…

Using the new Google Finance website to get data is unfortunately not possible. It doesn’t offer much in the way of data that is useful within StockMarketEye. There are also significant technical challenges to getting data out of the new site due to their “unique” redesign.

That means that fundamental data is definitively gone for Google Finance ticker symbols. Historical dividend and split data for Google Finance tickers is also no longer available.

However, it is possible that we could use the intra-day historical data to compute current-day quote data for Google Finance ticker symbols. This would be, essentially, just the open, high, low, last price, volume and previous close values.

Technically, this solution should work. Our concern is with its durability. The Google Finance historical data source currently still works, but as Google has removed most other ways of getting financial data, we don’t know how long this solution will last – it is almost certain that it too will stop working at some point in the future.

Paid Quotes?

Would you be willing to pay for quotes?

From our initial investigations at the end of last year, paid quotes are not cheap, do not cover a broad range of markets, and often limit the number of quotes you can receive per day.

If you would be willing to pay for quotes, let us know (either in the comments or at our support email) which markets/countries you trade in and what your think they should cost. We don’t have control over the pricing, but it will help us determine if we should pursue the paid pricing option.

[Update]

We have released StockMarketEye 4.2.6 which maintains support for Google Finance ticker symbols from markets and security types that are not available on Yahoo Finance. Specifically, the new version will retrieve EOD (end-of-day) quotes for Canadian and other non-US mutual funds from Google Finance until such time as Google closes off that last entry point to the data.

Unfortunately, Yahoo Finance has decided to discontinue the main outlet that StockMarketEye and many other 3rd party financial apps use to get current stock quotes.

This change has primarily affected the fundamental quotes on the desktop application (v4), as well as all quotes in the iOS and Android versions of StockMarketEye. Desktop versions of StockMarketEye older than v4 (i.e. 3.3.14, 2.9.9, etc) are also not receiving any quotes.

The reasoning behind this change from Yahoo Finance is:

“It has come to our attention that this service is being used in violation of the Yahoo Terms of Service. As such, the service is being discontinued. For all future markets and equities data research, please refer to finance.yahoo.com.”

You can read this statement as well as many user’s comments on this abrupt service disruption on the Yahoo forum.

Implications for StockMarketEye

This obviously has a significant impact on StockMarketEye and countless other applications and investors that relied on Yahoo’s service.

Here at StockMarketEye, we are investigating alternative options. The most basic of these options will attempt to continue to use Yahoo Finance in some way to retrieve quote data. Other options we are investigating are alterntive sources of data, both free and paid.

Our hope is to find a viable, short-term solution to this issue. Looking farther down the road, our goal is to find a solution that will support the long-term viablity of StockMarketEye for the broadest range of investors as possible.

We will update this blog post or add new posts here when any new information becomes available.

We thank you for your patience and in the mean time, wish you continued success with your investments.

Updates

[Update – Nov 3] For those of you still using older versions (v3, v2) of the desktop app: Updates to address this issue will be added to the current version (v4) only. We will not be making any changes to the older desktop versions, sorry. See this page for more details on the upgrade process and pricing.

[Update – Nov 5] We’ve submitted an updated version of the iOS app to Apple. This version brings back the quotes, including fundamentals. It will be available for update on the App Store as soon as it passes the Apple review process – that should be the middle of next week if all goes well.

[Update – Nov 6] The updated iOS app is now available on the App Store.

[Update – Nov 11] We are in the final stages of finishing the update for the desktop app. Baring any last minute issues, we will be releasing it early next week. Sign-up to our news letter to be notified of when it is available, or check back here.

[Update – Nov 13] We have just released StockMarketEye 4.2.0. This version fixes the fundamental quotes for both Yahoo and Google Finance ticker symbols. To update to this version, you will need to download and install a fresh copy from our website.

[Update – Dec 2] We have released an updated version of the Android app which fixes the quotes issues as well as the on-line sync issue. It should appear in the Google Play store today.

Many users have noticed that Google Finance ticker symbols are no longer updating in StockMarketEye. The Google Finance ticker symbols started to have problems at the end of last week. Today (September 6th, 2017) they have completely stopped working. This affects the desktop versions of StockMarketEye (Mac and Windows) as well the mobile apps for iOS and Android. The charts for these stocks still update correctly, however.

It is not yet clear if this is due to a temporary problem on Google’s side or if Google has turned off access to 3rd party applications like StockMarketEye.

The problem is NOT related to the release of StockMarketEye v4.1.2 over the weekend.

We are closely monitoring the situation. Hopefully, this is just a temporary issue and Google will fix things on their side soon.

However, we are also looking for alternative solutions, in case Google has permanently turned off access to their financial data for 3rd party apps like StockMarketEye.

Workarounds

• You could switch to Yahoo Finance ticker symbols.

Potential Alternatives

• Paid real-time quotes – would you be willing to pay a monthly fee for real-time quotes in StockMarketEye?
• Other free data sources – Other potential data sources exist (Bloomberg, Morningstar, etc), but there are always trade-offs in the amount and breadth of data available.

If you have an alternative suggestion, don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments.

[Update – Friday September 8, 2017 12:00 UTC]

I’ve done some digging and it appears that Google has permanently turned off the data access point that StockMarketEye (and many other people and software) was using.

However, I am in the process of evaluating a couple of solutions that will allow StockMarketEye to continue to support Google Finance ticker symbols. If all goes well, I will have one of those ready by the end of the weekend or early next week.

Stay tuned and thank you for your patience.

Nick
StockMarketEye

[Update – Saturday September 9, 2017 13:00 UTC]

I’ve been able to integrate one of the solutions mentioned on Friday and have released a new version of StockMarketEye (v4.1.3). All Google Finance ticker symbols should work again. However, it will take longer now to download the quotes. How much longer depends on the number of Google Finance ticker symbols you have in your Watchlists and Portfolios. The more you have, the longer it will take.

Thanks for using StockMarketEye and don’t hesitate to tell your friends about us!

As some may already have noticed, the Yahoo Finance data quote feed is not updating properly since the close of trade on Wednesday November 19th. For many users the quotes are stuck, with the last trade from the close on Wednesday. Other users, however, are not experiencing any problems.

This leads us to believe that it is a regional issue. Users from some parts of the world, Western North America especially, are having problems. On the other hand, users from Europe and other parts of the world are not experiencing any problems.

Unfortunately, as much as we would like to fix it, there’s not much we can do at this point. The issue is with Yahoo Finance and their data feed that StockMarketEye uses. Typically Yahoo fixes these types of issues quickly, so I’m hopeful that they will get it resolved soon.

We will update this post when we know more. Leave a comment for us below letting us know if you are or are not affected by it and where you’re located.

[Update #1] Please add your vote to this “suggestion” for fixing the issue at Yahoo (the link goes directly to the Help section of the Yahoo Finance website). The more votes, the more attention it will get from them:

https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/207809-finance-gs/suggestions/6749809-excel-api-quotes-still-stuck-at-19-nov-please-fi

[Update #2 (2pm EST, November 21, 2014)] We’ve had a number of users tell us that it is working for them again. Seems all is back to normal. Thanks for your patience.

We are developing a new version of StockMarketEye and would like to know which potential new features are important to you.

Please help us out by taking this 2 minute survey. It is completely anonymous and you’ll be helping us shape the near future direction of StockMarketEye.

Take our feature survey!

Thanks for your help!
StockMarketEye

StockMarketEye is on sale for the holidays!

Now through December 15th, 2013, get $10 off the normal price.

Keep your eye on your investments this holiday season and in the new year with StockMarketEye!