Is it possible to get the index of a exchange using Finance::Quote?

Question

I need to get the index of a exchange like NASDAQ rather than the price of a specific stock in that exchange. I suppose that Finance::Quote will come to the rescue , but after a quick go-through of the document, I find it the way one can use the module for query is like:

   %info = $q->fetch("australia","CML")

which means both the exchange and the stock should be specified in the query. then the question is: does the index itself can be treated as a stock and has a symbol name which can be used in the query?

Of course, if you have other way can meet my needs rather than using Finance::Quote, please feel free to write down your solution.

Answer 1

the symbol for the nasdaq composite is "^IXIC". For nyse composite it's "^NYA".

each quote provider might have a different syntax though.

Answer 2

The problem with your question is that you are assuming that there is just one index for a particular exchange. Whilst there may well be a particular index that is dominant (eg. for stocks primarily traded on the London Stock Exchange, the FTSE 100 might be considered the main index; similarly for the NYSE it would be the Dow Jones Industrial Average) other exchanges may have a less clear leader in their collection of associated indicies (eg. for the Australian Stock Exchange, the S&P/ASX 200 and the All Ordinaries index are both frequently quoted side-by-side in the evening broadcast news).

Symbology of stocks, indicies, option chains, futures, etc is quite a complicated field in financial IT. Many of the symbology standards are backed by a data vendor (eg. Reuters, Bloomberg) and use of their standards requires a commercial license. On the other hand there are other efforts aiming to make symbology more open (Bloomberg themselves are behind one of these efforts).

I'm not familiar with the data sources of the Finance::Quote package you reference, but if you are serious about accessing market data (ie. prepared to pay for it) but don't need the cost/complexity/speed of a solution from Reuters, Bloomberg, etc, you could do alot worse than check out what Xignite offers in the way of market data accessible via web services.